


A Place To Stand

by nenya_kanadka



Series: A Place To Stand AU [3]
Category: Babylon 5
Genre: Alien Gender/Sexuality, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Canon Bisexual Character, F/F, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Happy Ending, Other, POV Alternating, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Post-Canon, Requited Love, Three Is Sacred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-08
Updated: 2013-07-12
Packaged: 2017-11-11 16:59:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 22,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/480782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nenya_kanadka/pseuds/nenya_kanadka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-<i>Sleeping In Light</i>, post-John/Delenn/Lennier. In continuity with <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/475938">Three Times Is A Beginning</a>.</p><p>Two years after John's death, Susan Ivanova has settled into her new role on Minbar, but is getting mixed signals from President Delenn. Delenn finds herself drawn more and more to her old friend (and new Anla'shok Na), and Lennier must find his footing in the family in the absence of his once-rival, as Susan grows closer to them both.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Duck Dodgers In The 23rd & 1/2 Century

The last thing Susan had ever expected to be doing in Tuzanor was watching Daffy Duck. But when Delenn found out that Susan had never seen Duck Dodgers, the look of delight on her face was impossible to resist. 

"Mr. Garibaldi sent us copies of his cartoons," Delenn said, feeding the data crystals into the reader, "when David was born. He said he wanted to be sure he was exposed to classic Earth humour." 

"I'll bet." Susan grinned. Leave it to Michael to start teaching the ethos of practical jokes as early as possible. Minbari might revere laughter, but she didn't think he would have thought that was enough for any child of _his_ acquaintance.

"I don't entirely understand them," Delenn said as the logo came up on the screen. Catchy, tinny music blared from the speakers. "But I think you'll like them. It is part of your history, after all." 

Delenn's enthusiasm was contagious. Susan found she really didn't care if the old vids were any good or not. It was just nice to spend some time with Delenn, talking about nothing in particular. She caught moments alone with her friend when she could, these days. At Delenn's suggestion they'd been having working lunches about once a week since soon after Susan had arrived in Tuzanor, so the Anla'shok Na and the President were always up to date on relevant business between the Rangers and the Interstellar Alliance. But a quiet night in like this, just Susan and Delenn, was much more rare. 

Delenn settled in next to her on the couch and reached for the popcorn. She had untucked her hair after dinner, and the long dark tresses, lightly frosted with grey, fell over her shoulders in casual curls. "There is a moral to this one, you will see. You can overextend yourself fighting an enemy, and destroy yourself in the process." 

"He's a cartoon duck with a yellow bobble on his head, Delenn." 

"Yes, I know." Delenn's eyes twinkled with suppressed amusement. She tucked her feet up under her, mirroring Susan's pose. "What do you suppose is the significance of the small pink creature?"

Susan squinted at the screen, where a little round pink thing was babbling away. "I think that's supposed to be a pig. In a spaceship. With a duck." 

Delenn raised her brows. "Perhaps it's a symbol of interspecies harmony." 

Susan laughed. "Yeah, up until the point where the--that little black guy in the helmet starts trying to blow up the duck." She gestured with her glass of fruit juice. 

"Marvin the Martian," Delenn pronounced with the voice of authority. 

"He's wearing a broom on his head." Susan snagged the popcorn bowl and helped herself. 

Delenn looked thoughtful. She rested her chin on her hand on the arm of the couch. "Michael always said this was his second-favourite thing in the universe. But he would never say what his first favourite thing was." 

Susan choked on her popcorn. "Delenn!" 

"What?" Delenn's eyes were all innocence, but the corners of her lips twitched.

Susan coughed and rescued the popcorn bowl from its slow slide towards the floor. "You must have asked John that once." 

Now Delenn did smile, very smug. "Yes, and he reacted the same way you just did." 

"You're terrible." Susan shook her head, but she couldn't help grinning. Oh, _now_ she could see why Michael and Delenn had bonded over this stuff. It had been way too long since she'd seen Delenn's wicked sense of humour. 

"I still don't understand what's so funny about sex." 

Susan eyed her. "Not even after being married to John?" She winced. _Stop bringing up John. Or his sex life, for God's sake._

Delenn settled more comfortably into the couch. "Mmm. Sex is many things, but not a joke, to Minbari." 

"Huh." Not that Susan had thought about sex with Minbari. Much. She shifted on the couch and stretched her legs out in front of her with a sigh. 

The duck and the little black Martian were going at it now, the sight gags coming fast and furious. Susan stifled a few objections of _That's not physically possible!_ as they escalated rapidly through more and more implausible weaponry. Delenn's promised moral arrived with a bang, and Susan snickered. Oh yeah, this was Michael all the way. 

Somehow Delenn had ended up leaning up against Susan's arm, and she dropped her head to rest on Susan's shoulder as the end credits rolled. "I don't think I want to move." 

"Me either." 

Delenn yawned. "Should we watch another one?" 

Delenn's crest was kind of digging into her neck, but Susan felt too cosy to complain. "Sure. Are there any more with the little guy in the helmet?" 

"Marvin the Martian." 

"Right." 

Delenn started the next vid. It seemed like Mars really had it in for Earth in these things, and Susan wondered how far back that conflict went in human storytelling. The little Martian guy was cute, at least. Martians as aliens, what a strange thought. Aliens. Minbari sex had always seemed like it would be cold and complicated, anyway. Something with crystals and chanting, no doubt. Delenn, though. Delenn was really warm. She'd never noticed how warm Delenn was before. It was so rare to be really warm on Minbar.

Delenn reached into the popcorn bowl again. She came up with a bigger handful than she could eat all at once, and wordlessly offered the extra kernels to Susan. Susan's hands were occupied by the bowl, so she dipped her head and nibbled some of the popcorn out of Delenn's hand. 

_What did you do that for, Susan?_ she thought. But Delenn didn't seem to mind. She shifted a little more on the couch, and now she was curled up into Susan, her knee pressed into Susan's thigh. Susan could put her arm around her, if she wanted. 

Susan realized she'd missed the last few minutes of the cartoon. She wasn't quite sure who was blowing up who at the moment, or why. Delenn had gone quiet, and had settled her hand on Susan's forearm. She was playing with the sleeve of Susan's brown Ranger robe. 

John had been Anla’shok Na, Susan thought. Had they curled up in the evenings like this, her in her jewel-toned dresses, him in these same robes? 

"I'm glad you're here, Susan," Delenn said quietly. She slipped her hand down and intertwined her fingers with Susan's. 

Susan swallowed. _She's just being friendly. She misses John._ She squeezed Delenn's hand. "Me, too." She felt like she should say something else, to distract herself from the urge to kiss the top of Delenn's head. "Thank you for having me here." 

"I wouldn't want you anywhere else on Minbar, Susan." Delenn sighed and went quiet again. Susan thought for a moment that she was going to drift off. The bright animation drew to a close, and Susan felt no urge whatsoever to disentangle herself. Did Minbari cuddle, then, or was it just a Delenn thing?

With a small yawn and one more squeeze of her hand, Delenn got up. 

She looked down at Susan for a moment as if she wanted to say something more. Then she brushed the wrinkles out of the robe at Susan's shoulder. "Goodnight. I will see you tomorrow." 

"Good night, Delenn." 

Susan sat there in the dark for a while, staring at the cartoon logo on the vidscreen. She shut her eyes. 

_Ah, hell, Ivanova. You are in way over your head._


	2. Snapshots

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From this chapter forward, this story uses concepts from hearts_blood and rivendellrose's [Minbari third gender AU](http://hearts-blood.livejournal.com/347638.html), where Minbari have three sexes and at times bond in triads. Lennier is one of the third gender. A little of how he came to be involved with John and Delenn in this continuity appears in [Three Times Is A Beginning.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/475938)

The bed felt too wide again tonight, the way it often did without John. Delenn rearranged the blankets for the third time, and when that did not help, she got up. Perhaps if she changed the angle of the bed, she could sleep.

The lever moved more slowly than she remembered. She'd had this bed made specially--double-wide and adjustable--when she and John had first come to Minbar, so they could each could take turns sleeping the way that felt right. She had gotten so used to his way, and he to hers, over the years, that they would go for long periods of time without changing the bed's position. The bed had been flat when John had gone to the sea, and it had taken her months before she could sleep with it properly angled and not feel that it would keep John from her dreams.

It had been two years now, almost three by the human calendar, and Delenn still slept with the bed flat on nights when she needed to feel John near her. Now, she arranged the pillows on the newly-horizontal surface and sighed. 

It was not the bed that was keeping her awake. No, it was the fact that she did not want to have gone to bed at all. It had been so comfortable, relaxing with Susan in the den. Delenn pulled the blankets up to her chest and felt a smile creep back onto her face. When she'd suggested watching Michael's old vids, she had expected to enjoy Susan's reactions, but she had not realized how much she would want to keep seeing Susan sputter with laughter, or that she would have to turn her face away to keep from staring at the line of Susan's jaw and the way wisps of hair escaped from her bun to trail down her neck. She had wanted to stay up all night talking, sitting so close in the warm circle of Susan's arms that she could feel every one of her giggles at the increasingly elaborate metaphors Delenn couldn't seem to stop herself from spinning. 

And that was why she had said good night. 

Delenn rolled over and stared at the scattered collection of photographs that covered most of one bedroom wall. Some were formal portraits, in heavy frames. Some were quick snapshots. Some were not photographs at all, but drawings by her son David, his enthusiasm outpacing his skills at first, later caricatures capturing the essence of friends or family in a few clever strokes.

Up near the top left corner, where she had originally intended it to hang in dignified solitude, was the wedding photo that had been taken of her and John on Babylon 5. It was surrounded by snapshots of family--Liz and Danny and John's nieces and nephews, Delenn's father, Mayan's daughters. There was Lennier, holding a six-year-old, sunburned David, on a memorable visit to John's father's farm on Earth. David, solemn and proper in his temple robes on the last day of schooling--and next to it, David in the same robes grinning broadly and throwing a strange square human hat into the air. A smallish photo of her and Lennier, the summer she was pregnant with David, by a river in the mountains where John had taken them all for a rare respite from intergalactic politics.

There were not many photographs of her and John and Lennier all together. Either they had not all been in the same place at the same time, or the photographer had assumed--as most did--that they would want only her and John in a shot. It had been easy to let people assume things that weren't true; most humans saw the happy couple and looked no further. Even on Minbar, where bonded triads such as theirs were not unheard of, humans and aliens in the Anla'shok did not stop to ask why her former aide--now a successful Ranger in his own right--should still live with the Entil'zha and her husband. Minbari saw quickly enough, once they looked past the fact that John was human, but they had their own reasons for keeping their counsel.

Her eyes went to a favourite photo of them. Someone had caught them in a quiet moment at some event in the last busy days on Babylon 5. She and John stood together, facing Lennier, who was turned mostly away from the camera. She was smiling, had just spoken, and John was looking at Lennier with an curious, thoughtful expression, as if he was trying to figure him out. He had worn that look a lot in those days. She did not mind that the camera had not captured Lennier's face, because she remembered the way he had leaned in, eyes only for her, as clearly as she remembered John's strong arm around her back. 

There were pictures of Susan. She found the one of Susan in her Earthforce general's uniform, straight and tall and soldierly, and the one from a long-ago dinner party, Susan and John and Stephen laughing uproariously at some joke of Michael's. Delenn found herself wishing that she had a picture of Susan by herself, a casual portrait with Susan in one of the beautiful dresses she wore all too rarely. Perhaps with her hair curled in those soft, feminine waves that made Delenn want to reach out and touch them...

Yes, that was why she was not out in the den with Susan right now. There was something happening between them, or at least something happening to the way she thought about Susan, and Delenn had wanted to get away quietly and think about it before she acted any more rashly than she already had. 

She had wanted very much to simply fall asleep against Susan's shoulder. Or, if she were honest, to invite her back here to sleep. A Minbari friend would have seen the invitation as a sign of close friendship, and if things had become more sensual they would simply have discussed which of several rituals for sex-with-friendship they wanted to do in the morning. Delenn was well-aware that humans from John and Susan's culture did not interpret things the same way. They tended to leap to sex as the primary motivation for anything in such a situation. John had never understood the friendship she had had with Mayan before their marriage, how it could be both sexual and yet no more about sex than his friendship with Stephen was about hugging, or how she thought of Mayan as family now, and Mayan's children as her own cousins. 

The problem was that Delenn wasn't sure that Susan's interpretation would be wrong. She did not _only_ want to sleep with Susan as a friend. If Susan were here now she would not want to stop at just holding her hand. Or with kissing her. Or with making love to her for one night. Maybe she did not even want to stop at sex-with-friendship.

Delenn curled herself around a pillow and looked at the picture of her and John and Lennier again. With John, it had been uncharted territory, finding each other in fits and starts through the ever-shifting realities of diplomacy and species and war. An adventure, a destiny, a great love affair. With Lennier, passion had simmered under the surface for years, slow and almost unacknowledged until her marriage to John had forced them to confront it. 

And Susan...what kind of love was Susan? She wished she could talk to John or to Lennier about it, but John could only listen now, not answer her, and Lennier was away with the Rangers again. She didn't think she could describe in a letter the way her stomach flipped when Susan smiled at her, or how she wanted to make their hugs last longer each time they touched, or how much she was hoping (against last year's evidence) that Susan would follow many of the human Ranger women in wearing less clothing as the spring progressed. 

The more she watched Susan move through her life the more Susan seemed to fit as if she had always been there. Delenn knew that some of her neighbours who realized that Lennier was her spouse and not merely a house-mate passed rumours that the same was true for Susan. She had shrugged such speculations off, but now she took a moment to imagine what it might be like if they were true. 

It was...comforting, she thought. It was warm and right and sweet. To wake up in Susan's arms; to have nights like tonight where she could flirt madly and then touch Susan just as much as she liked; to know Susan would always be there when she came home. To hold Susan's hand and Lennier's hand at the same time, as she had--so rarely--done with John and Lennier. 

_You are getting ahead of yourself,_ she thought, _You do not even know how she feels._

But she was not tossing and turning any more. Delenn burrowed into the covers and reached out to dim the lamp beside the bed. As the light faded slowly, she found the picture of Susan at dinner again, and thought about making Susan laugh like that, just before she kissed her.


	3. Distractions

Susan blocked Delenn's fighting pike with a grin, panting slightly. Late afternoon sunlight wavered through ceiling-high windows and onto the woven mats of the practice room floor. She was getting better at this. Private lessons were definitely the way to go, and not just because it was handy being able to train right here in the Presidential residence. 

Delenn spun in an elegant arc, her hair flying out behind her, her face focused and intent. Caught for half a second by the sheer physical beauty of what they were doing, Susan missed the glint in Delenn's eye as she came around, her _denn-bok_ not quite where it was supposed to be. 

Susan landed on her back with a thump, her pike clattering off to the side. In an instant Delenn was astride her hips, pinning her down, the _denn-bok_ pressed up lightly beneath her chin. Susan dragged air back into her lungs and grabbed the fighting pike with both hands. She shoved hard, but the pike did not move. Delenn, hardly breaking a sweat, leaned over her. Stray curls tumbled over her shoulders and her eyes sparked as she held Susan down almost effortlessly. "Good. What did you miss?"

Susan swore colourfully in Russian. "Watch where you're going to be, not where you were." 

"Yes." Delenn snapped the _denn-bok_ closed. She grabbed Susan's wrists and pinned them down beside her shoulders before Susan could so much as roll to dislodge her. "Your mind has been elsewhere this morning."

Susan pushed off the ground with her hips, but Delenn was much stronger than she looked. Susan tried not to think about the way Delenn's voice curled around her as warm as the weight of her body. "A bit distracted by how damn good you are," she groused. _How fucking gorgeous you are._ "You make it look so easy."

"An enemy will not care why you are unfocused, only that you are." Delenn was not to be deflected by praise. 

"Give me a PPG or room to swing my fist and I'll show you just how focused I can be." 

Delenn smirked down at her. "You think this is a waste of time, Anla'shok Na?" 

Susan let out a breath. "No. No, I really want to learn. I should have taken the time before this. The Rangers deserve someone who's serious about them." 

The muscles of Delenn's forearms flexed as she pressed Susan to the mat. Her simple blue practice robe moved with her like a second skin. She drew her brows together. "How well you can fight with the _denn-bok_ says nothing about your commitment to the Rangers, Susan. You should learn the art for its own sake, or not at all." 

Susan grunted. "I know. But damned if I'm gonna let all these twenty-year-olds beat me at something you and Jeff learned before they were born." 

That earned her a smile, and Delenn let her up. "You are doing well. You have the balance and grace of one who knows her body's power. You only need to continue the practice until you no longer have to think about it." She turned away to retrieve her fighting pike, skirts swirling around her bare feet. "Enough for today. We should shower." 

Susan flushed, glad Delenn couldn't see her face. She couldn't possibly know that Susan had started having the dream again. _Delenn, wet and naked, turning towards Susan with a look of frustration on her face and a bottle of shampoo in her hand--_ Susan shook herself. Years ago, that was years ago. A lifetime ago she'd taught Delenn how to shower. She'd done her damnedest afterwards to repress any thoughts of more interesting nakedness, especially once Delenn had started dating John. Hadn't even had the dream in fifteen years. But three times this week already she’d woken up with those erotic images behind her eyelids. 

She cleared her throat. "Right. I'll see you at dinner?" _Delenn, dragging her into the shower and pressing soap-slick hands between Susan's legs--_

Pike in hand, Delenn bit her lip in thought. "No, I'm afraid the meeting with the Abbai ambassador will go late. Tomorrow night, perhaps? At least for dessert."

Susan nodded, swallowed. "Sure." Dessert. Licking chocolate sauce off Delenn's breasts, slowly, taking her time… _Get a hold of yourself, Ivanova. Who has chocolate sauce on Minbar?_

She was almost glad for the cold spring air when she finally made it out of doors. It wasn't far to her office in the city, and she strode along the pedestrian pathway, eyeing the elegantly-appointed public gardens beside the path. Tiny green and blue plant shoots, carefully transplanted weeks ago by Worker-caste gardeners, struggled valiantly towards the weak sun. Susan shivered in sympathy, wishing them well. 

Come summertime, the seedlings in their complex patterns would burst forth in a jubilant mix of colours, filling the spaces between the pavements and the fountains with brightly-scented flowers. For a few short weeks, Tuzanor’s crystals and marble would be softened by a profusion of living art. She and Delenn could go to the festival again, maybe. Watch the Warrior caste dances. Watch the happy couples arm in arm...

 _How do you know she even likes women?_ This indisputably practical thought surfaced as she stamped the frost off her boots at the doors to the Anla'shok administrative complex. Susan nodded to the Ranger on evening guard. _Lots of women don't. So she got a bit snuggly the other night. Delenn touches everybody. She was probably just relaxing around you because you were safe. And then you went and made her think about John. Dammit._

Ranger One's office, high in the crystal-walled building, boasted a panoramic view out over the city. Susan watched the sunset turn the houses to gold and bronze as she triaged her messages. White Star 92 had finished its exercises early and would be on-planet the day after tomorrow, she noted. Anla’shok Lennier's face smiled at her from the recording, assuring her that all was well and his captain would report to her in person upon arrival. 

_Yes, and what about Lennier?_ she thought, the other train of thought overlapping this one. Delenn's former aide was an excellent Ranger, as well as an old friend. As a flight instructor he had a reputation for patience with the new recruits. Some of the non-Minbari thought he was a little too Religious, but Susan remembered him as a scrupulous young aide and simply smiled. She'd been surprised at how well he'd grown into his role. 

When he was on Minbar Lennier stayed at Delenn's, in the opposite wing of the house from Susan’s quarters. He'd stop in for a few days at a time, a few weeks, between Ranger missions, and then he'd be gone again. Delenn was always brighter when he was around. _Speaking of touching people._ Susan had always wondered about the two of them, back in the old days. Had they or hadn’t they? Whatever had gone on between them seemed to have died down around the time John and Delenn got married, though. Maybe, now, when Lennier was home--well, Delenn never said anything, and Lennier was always friendly and polite, the same as he'd always been. But then, they wouldn't exactly shout it from the housetops, would they? 

Susan was a great believer in giving people their space. Diplomatically finding these sorts of things out was Delenn’s strength, not hers, anyway. _Hey, Lennier. Are you sleeping with the President? If not, mind if I do?_ Yeah, right. Yet she kept hearing the lilt in Delenn’s voice, seeing the way her smile transformed her face from stern to breathtaking. _You think this is a waste of time, Anla'shok Na?_ The press of her thighs around Susan's waist, the strength of her hands on the fighting pike. _We should shower. What do I do with this—this_ hair _, Susan? I trust you._

_Sex is many things, to Minbari. I wouldn’t want you anywhere else._

_We should shower._

"All right," Susan said aloud to the empty room. "Okay. All right. How the hell _do_ you ask a Minbari woman out?"


	4. Homecoming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Touch seems to be as essential as sunlight."  
> ― Diane Ackerman

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Adronato based on the [Jump Now Minbari Dictionary.](http://www.jumpnow.de/dic/search.php)
> 
>  _va'hela_ \-- third-gendered parent  
>  _hela_ , _ah'hela_ \-- (third-gendered) spouse, my spouse  
>  _sala_ , _ah'sala_ \-- wife, my wife

Delenn closed her eyes and breathed in slowly. She tilted her head back and let the warmth of the newly-risen sun wash over her face and hands. There was a bittersweet ache to this ritual, still, and she thought there always would be. Yet this garden and this bench gave a calmness to her days that she missed on the occasions when she needed to be in Yedor or off-world for business of the Alliance. 

She talked to John, sometimes. Other days she simply rested, listening to the universe and centring herself before the mad rush of the day. It was the one time of day that was her own, inviolate. No one would disturb her. 

Every sunrise reminded her that John was not here. Would he wait for her beyond the Rim, she wondered? Or had he even now already been reborn--the first son of some young mother on Earth, the beloved last daughter of some Minbari family's old age? Who would be his mother, his father, his _va'hela_ , in this life? Bright, curious, recklessly loyal-- _Live, John_ , Delenn thought fiercely. _Your life was cut far too short this time. Live!_ Yet another part of her whispered, _Wait for me. Don't forget me, my love._

There was no answer, but the spring sun on her skin was warmer for a moment, and the ache in her heart eased a little. She opened her eyes and got up, smoothing her skirts. The wind picked up, rustling the tree overhead and blowing her hair into her eyes. 

As she turned to leave the garden, she heard footsteps coming towards her from the house and smiled. That, too, had become a morning ritual: Susan rising almost as early as Delenn and going to the offices of the Anla'shok Na before the rest of the staff were awake. As often as not, she'd pass her as Delenn came in from her morning meditation. Delenn liked the reminder that she did not live alone. 

"Good morning, Susan," she said, stepping into the house. But there was no one in the hall. Delenn paused with her hand on the cool grey-blue wall. Perhaps she'd been mistaken and Susan had been going in the other direction, and was already gone. 

"You are looking well, Delenn." The voice caught her by surprise and she spun in place. 

"Lennier!" He stood just inside the doorway, a slight Minbari figure in sober Ranger's robes and the gently-curving crest of the third gender. Real, familiar, and beautiful. Her heart lifted. She had just been wishing for him a few nights ago, but she'd thought him light-years away, training pilots, no matter that she missed him. "I did not know you were home." She tilted her head in thought, narrowed her eyes at him. "You have been conspiring with Susan again, not to tell me when you would have leave." 

His smile crinkled the corners of his eyes as he took the hands she held out to him. "I asked the Anla'shok Na not to tell you. I wanted it to be a surprise." 

She laughed, and slipped her arm into the crook of his elbow. She nestled her head against his shoulder. "And will the Anla'shok steal you away early as well?" 

"No," he said. "There are advantages to diplomacy." 

She drew him down the hall towards the inner house. "Meaning you reminded them that I have not seen you in two months?"

Lennier brought her hand to his lips and kissed it. "We live for the One, Delenn." 

"Lennier!" Delenn drew back, pretending reproach. He was the only one who called her that still. She heard the faintest echo in it of the time when he had been afraid to touch her, had used her titles and her name to caress her when he dared not use his hands. "I am not Entil'zha any longer." 

He pulled her to him with hands made sure by many years’ practice. "Always to me, _ah'sala_." 

She shook her head fondly, and let herself be kissed. "If you must be so flowery, I can think of better uses for your tongue." 

In an instant he had spun her up against the wall. She wrapped her arms about his neck and smiled at him unrepentantly. He bowed his forehead to hers. "You have meetings. You do not want to take me to bed." 

He was warm and solid under her hands where they pressed against his skin. She wanted her _hela_ free of these heavy robes. "As I said, it has been two months. They can get along without me for a few hours." 

"They will think you are having an affair." It was an old joke between them, shorn of its bitterness over the years. It only stung a little now, after two decades of her and him and John.

"The President is still married, even if some of the aliens are too dense to see it. Come to bed, Lennier." She stroked her fingertip down his cheek, over the faded scar from a long-ago training mishap. 

He sucked her finger into his mouth and watched her eyes darken. She had always loved his mouth. "You know that I can deny you nothing." 

Her hands were already working at his clothing. "I shall have you prove it." 

His robes slipped from his shoulders and he went to his knees, more slowly than he had in years past, but with the same look of finding his place in the universe. He opened her skirts and slid his hands up her soft, human thighs. "It is a law of nature that I should love you, Delenn. I am often surprised that scientists do not discover it: particles orbit their centre, Lennier belongs to Delenn." 

She swallowed around the sudden lump in her throat. After all these years, he could still say these things. "You have always been mine since the beginning." 

"I remember," he said, and pressed his lips to her skin. 

She tilted her head back against the wall and thought she could feel the sun on her face again as he kissed his way down her belly. She dug her hands into his shoulders as he slipped two fingers inside her, and was grateful that he held her up with his other hand when her knees went weak. It was fast, and sweet, and just rough enough, and she came against his mouth sooner than she expected. 

" _Ah'hela_ , do that again," she said, sliding down the wall. 

He pretended not to hear the breathlessness in her command, but his eyes sparkled. She rarely forgot herself enough to demand her pleasure before his. "Yes," he said.

She kissed him again, tasting herself on his lips, and pulled him down onto the floor. They would worry, later, about finding a soft bed, or breakfast, or the outside world. For now it was enough that he was here, and he was hers, and the sky was bright with sun.


	5. History Lessons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Adronato based on the [Jump Now Minbari Dictionary.](http://www.jumpnow.de/dic/search.php)
> 
>  _salas'dar, sala_ \-- woman, wife  
>  _malas'dar, mala_ \-- man, husband  
>  _helas'dar, hela_ \-- third-gendered Minbari, third-gendered spouse

Susan set her tray down on the long table with a sigh. She couldn't seem to get the image of Delenn this morning out of her mind's eye: the way the wind had picked up her hair as she walked out to watch the sunrise and the way she'd smoothed down her long dress before she sat down...there was just something about it that made Susan smile goofily to herself. 

On impulse, she scooted over to sit next to the only other person on this side of the _sechs’_ dining hall at this time of morning. Shalann was a language instructor with the Rangers in Tuzanor, and one of the first friends Susan had made here. She was also more willing than most to put up with awkward cultural inquiries from the human Ranger One. 

Susan made a little bow--they almost came naturally to her these days--and greeted the linguist. "Mind if I ask you something?" 

Shalann set down her xenn juice. "It is far too early in the morning for me to teach you Lenn'ah swear words. Come back after noon."

Susan laughed. "I promise, nothing like that this time." 

"Go on, then." 

"If you were going to ask another Minbari woman out, what would you do?" 

Shalann eyed her curiously. "You mean begin a romantic campaign?" At Susan's nod she looked thoughtful. "There are a number of rituals, of course. Specifics depend to some degree on whether one is Warrior, Religious, or Worker caste. But why ask me?"

"Well, you're a Minbari woman, you'd know," said Susan. She picked up her fork and began attacking breakfast. There was a pause from Shalann. "What?"

"I'm not a woman." 

Susan frowned, looking more closely at her friend. Shalann seemed just like any other Minbari woman to her. Slim, elegant, really fond of pastels. "You're not?"

Shalann shook her head. She thought a moment. "I am...I am like President Delenn's _hela_."

Susan looked at her blankly, trying to place the word. "Delenn's spouse? You mean John?"

Shalann took a sip of juice. "No, not her husband. Not her _mala_ , her _hela_. You know him--Lennier." 

"Wait, what?" 

"What is confusing you, Susan?" It might have been just Susan's imagination, but Shalann was starting to look as if she was sorry she'd brought up the topic. 

"You're telling me Delenn's married to _Lennier_ and...and you're a man, too?" 

Shalann gave the tiniest shake of her head, an expression on her face rather like the one she got in the middle of an Adronato lesson with new offworld Ranger recruits. "President Delenn was married to Anla'shok Na Sheridan when he was alive. They were also bonded to their third, Lennier. Many Minbari were surprised, but it _is_ the highest form of marriage among our people. Delenn, being who she is, found a way even though her _mala_ was human. Did you not know this?" 

"No! Delenn never told me she had two husbands." Bits of history were starting to click together in Susan's head now, though. Lennier's visits to the house whenever he was home from a Ranger mission suddenly made a completely different kind of sense. And hadn't John had Lennier in tow an awful lot as a bodyguard when Susan had run into him during her later Earthforce career? Even David--once when David was tiny she'd told him to go to his Uncle Lennier, and David had screwed up his face at the silly adult and said with supreme childish disdain, _He's not my_ uncle _, Aunt Susan._

"Not two husbands. Husband and _hela_."

Susan swirled her spoon distractedly in her breakfast cereal. "How come you know all this about them when I don't? I mean, Delenn's been my friend for twenty years, and you only joined the Rangers after she quit being Ranger One." 

Shalann's head tilted in thought. "For most of its history the Anla'shok was made up only of women and men. There is an unfortunate tendency to expect thirds to only find their hearts' calling closer to home. When Entil'zha Sinclair opened the Rangers to all Minbari regardless of caste, he said nothing about gender, but some thirds began to apply." Shalann was Worker caste, and must have been doubly barred from Ranger service. "Lennier was one of the first, and highly visible because of it. Everyone knew he was devoted to Delenn, and when she took a husband and had a child...it seemed clear. It was confirmed in how they raised their son."

"How they raised their--hang on. Hang on." As Susan processed this, her eyes widened. "Are you saying David is Lennier's son? Not John's?" _Damn, back in the day on B5 that would have been grist for the rumour mill for sure._

Shalann shook her head. "Of course he's Sheridan's son. And Lennier's, and Delenn's. On Minbar, it takes three." 

_Three is sacred._ Right. She kept hearing that, here. "You mean...three parents. Three _sexes_." 

Shalann's lips quirked. "I knew you would get it at last, Anla'shok Na." 

Oh, Minbari could do smug damn well. Susan glared at her friend. "But why wouldn't they _tell_ me?"

"Were you involved in their decision to have a child?"

"No, that's their business."

"Exactly." Shalann went back to her breakfast with an air of satisfaction. 

Susan chewed in silence for a while. Why hadn’t _John_ said anything, though? How many years had he been married to the both of them? _You got an awful lot more Minbari than you thought, John._ Minbari don't lie, went the truism. But they were absolute masters at the need-to-know. "I guess if it took you guys fifteen years and a civil war to tell us you even had a Worker caste, I shouldn't be surprised." 

Shalann seemed to relax slightly. "It is a very private thing. I would not have mentioned it now, except that I thought you did know. Because you are courting President Delenn." 

Susan spilled her tea. "I'm what?" 

Shalann simply raised a brow ridge at her. "It is not so secret as you suppose, Anla'shok Na." 

"Oh." Susan dabbed at the spilled tea with the table linens. Crap, was her crush on her best friend's widow obvious to half of Tuzanor? "If I--if Delenn--are you saying that if I want to date her I have to date Lennier too?"

A small shrug. "He is her _hela_ , her spouse. But I do not know how humans do these things. You will have to ask her." 

"I guess so." _You're going to have to talk to Delenn anyway, Ivanova. Unless you want to drop the whole thing and pretend you aren't having those dreams and you don't want to kiss her every time you see her. You could do that. Put up or shut up, eh?_ She groped for a change of topic. "You keep saying 'he'. But you said you're the same as Lennier, and everyone calls you 'she'. How does that--?"

"Not everyone. Listen to the Minbari Anla'shok the next time they speak about me, or Lennier. Our languages have the words." 

"And you're not a woman. He's...not a man?" 

"No. We are both _helasae'dar_. The third gender." 

"I used to have a human security officer like that, on the _Titans_. In Earthforce. Kit Owusu. Not a guy, not a girl. A bit confusing at first, but after a while that was just Kit. Is it like that?"

Shalann made a non-committal noise. "We're 'neither male nor female' in the same way you're 'not male'. It's an accurate description, but insufficient. We are simply what we are."

Susan studied her friend, still looking for signs. In what ways was she like Lennier, and not like Delenn? "I couldn't tell." 

She could swear Shalann rolled her eyes. "It is quite obvious that most humans can't tell. You assign us a gender almost at random. I do not understand it. How do you decide which of us you're going to call male and which female?" 

Susan frowned. "Well, we...there must be something that makes us think..." 

"It's obvious to _us_ that we are not men or women." 

"And to other Minbari?"

"Of course." 

So were there genderqueer Minbari, somewhere, too? And how did it all work, if they were really reincarnated like they thought? _Not that that's any of your business._ She fiddled with her silverware. "I'm sorry for calling you a woman. Do you want me to use something else, now?" 

Shalann shook her head. "In English, no. It is very private, as I said. If you began to call me something different, I would have to explain to all the other humans and aliens. The human words are wrong, but then, humans are wrong about many Minbari things. But in Adronato--" Shalann, fluent in three Minbari languages and two alien ones, smiled. "It will only improve your grasp of the language, to learn the right words." 

"And I won't be calling you a girl by accident. Or a boy." 

Shalann grinned. "I will appreciate it." 

"Then I will." Susan sipped the last of her tea. "So you think maybe it's not impossible, with Delenn?" 

Her friend considered her for a long moment. "You have never seemed to me to be one who would choose _impossible_ quests." 

There was a halo of golden hair, a bright smile, and a morning out of nightmares in Susan's thoughts when she answered. "You never knew me when I was young, Shalann." 

Shalann rose with her empty breakfast tray. "But I think, Ranger One, that Delenn did."


	6. Possibilities at Breakfast

Lennier propped himself up on his elbow and looked down at Delenn. She looked utterly ravished and utterly beautiful, eyes drifting shut and cheeks flushed in the aftermath of sex. Her long, still-dark hair fell in sweat-damp curls across her breasts. She was still half-wearing the dress; he'd managed to open the fastenings down the front, but she'd had no patience for properly undressing. He smiled: she had nonetheless somehow managed to get _him_ completely naked. 

"We are too old for sex on the floor, Lennier," Delenn murmured without bothering to open her eyes. 

Lennier chuckled. "As I recall, Delenn, that was your fault."

" _I_ said we should go to bed. _You_ took that to mean you should fall to your knees." 

He knew she had not minded in the slightest, from the way she had looked down at him. But perhaps he had been a little impatient. When John was alive he would never have done this, by the doors where anyone could see. And when John was alive she would not have been celibate while he was gone, either. 

He flattened his palm over her stomach. "Have you eaten, _ah'sala_?"

"Mmm, no. I had thought to find Susan for breakfast. But I think she has already gone." Delenn opened her eyes the rest of the way and sat up. Lennier started to search for his clothing, and she watched him with soft eyes as he dressed. 

He helped her up and hid his small frown in her hair. Susan, of course. He had been glad when John suggested that Susan take the post of Anla'shok Na after him, and it had seemed only natural for her to move in with Delenn when she arrived in Tuzanor. But he did not want to think of even Susan stumbling across him and Delenn making love. 

"What is it, Lennier?" 

She was perceptive, of course. Always. He shook his head slightly and helped her fasten the last of her dress against the slight spring chill. "Would we have been interrupted?"

"Ah." She looked speculative for a moment. Then she smirked. She leaned forward and kissed just under his ear. "I think we made enough noise that Susan would have left us in peace." 

He ducked his head. He still was not used to being the one others left in peace, with Delenn. Years of circumspection had worn smooth grooves in his mind, careful patterns of how they must behave before those who did not know. _This is Delenn's husband,_ polite strangers in the Alliance would say. _And this is Lennier, her bodyguard._ Or _A Ranger_ , or _David's teacher of Minbari histories_. 

The shape of John in the family was still present, fading only a little every time they did something like this that reminded them that they were only two now, no longer three. Nineteen years seemed far too short a time to share with their beloved alien. Strong, kind John had been as stubborn in his defence of Lennier by the end as he had been wary of him at the beginning. 

"I miss John," Lennier said suddenly. 

Her hand paused on his cheek. "I know." 

"I miss his hands," he said. She leaned against him and he could feel her warm, uneven breaths against his neck. There was a world of shared history in her quiet nod. He would say the things she could not, sometimes, because she should not have to be alone. It had always been Lennier's part to be her witness.

"Come and eat," she said after a few deep breaths.

"Wait a moment." Lennier disappeared up the hallway for a moment, and came back with his travelling case slung across his shoulders. They wandered through the house and fetched up in an alcove in the kitchen, where they sank into soft, low seats around a table meant for the use of one or two people at a time.

Delenn watched him, chin in hands, as he found cups and tea and breakfast pastries. He could feel her smile on the back of his neck at his little "hmm" of contentment when he found things in the cupboards just as they had been the last time he was home. When everything was arranged on the table between them to his satisfaction, he dug in his pack and produced a small flat box about two handspans across. 

"Is that what I think it is?" 

"The last from this mission, yes." It had taken three nights' preparation and a good amount of bartering with Shok'nali Feinell for the proper ingredients, but it was worth it just for the way Delenn's eyes lit.

"Ever-inventive," she said, and reached for the box. She pried open the lid and dipped her fingers into the gooey dark dessert within. He watched, enraptured, as she licked her first two fingers clean, fingers that he knew still tasted of him. 

Were he a younger lover, breakfast would have gone uneaten for another half hour, but instead he said, "Will you have this all now, or shall we save it for later?"

She made a meditative sound and dipped her expressive fingers into the box again. This time she fed it to him, watching him watch her with slow, contented eyes. "Let's share it with Susan." 

"Ah." Well, and that was all right. He liked Susan, and it would be nice to share his cooking with a new audience. He thought of packing the dessert away again, but then he thought that if Delenn changed her mind, he had no objections to watching her eat the entire box by hand. 

"About Susan," Delenn said when they were halfway through their second cup of tea and the breakfast pastries were mere crumbs. "I have been thinking. I would like to invite her to bed." 

"I am a little surprised that you have not already done so," Lennier said honestly. Delenn had been extremely tactile as long as he'd known her, taking comfort in touch with all her friends. He was used to a Ranger's single bunk himself, but ever since the loss of John it had pained him to think of how many nights their wife now slept alone. She could rest with Susan, he thought.

"I have yet to ask her." Delenn was giving her tea an introspective look. 

"Shy, Delenn?" he teased gently. It could not be that. He had not seen her take a new lover since before John, but she'd always been direct and confident when she had. 

A small snort and a laugh. "Not that. It is only that I have begun to think that once she came to me I would not want to let her go. Lennier, I've...I think that I understand myself now. I think I could sleep, and let Susan watch, and tell her why." 

Lennier slowed the teacup he was raising to his lips, and set it down, watching her grave, beautiful face. Sex with a friend was only remarkable because it was the first time she had considered it since John. But Susan as their spouse... "This is new," he said. "Since the last time I was home." 

"Yes." A small, secret smile played at her lips. "I have only just realized, myself."

Seeing his _sala_ in love was a very familiar sensation. Her love for John had been tinged with deep sorrow these last two years, and Lennier realized he had missed seeing this lightness about her. "She makes you happy." 

Delenn seemed to come back from whatever daydream floated across her vision. She caught his hand across the table and squeezed. "I will not ask her to be my _sala_ until you and I can speak with one voice on this. I know how it was with John, at the beginning."

She did not know, Lennier thought, not truly. She had tried to be even-handed with her spouses, but she had not been the one who had been overlooked, whose marriage had gone unseen except by a few of their own people. It was not quite jealousy he felt, or at least not jealousy of Susan, so he said, "Ask her to bed, first, and start there." 

She cast him a look from under her brows. "No, I will say, 'Susan, marry me,' the very next time I see her, before I know whether she is interested at all." 

His lips quirked. "Ask her while I am here. I admit I am curious. And that way if she is going to steal you away, I can steal you back." 

"And how will you do that, _ah'hela_?" He heard the same bright sparkle of challenge in her voice that she had used years ago in his diplomatic lessons. He pushed the teacups out of the way, leaned over the table, and showed her. 

This time when she said, "Come to bed, Lennier," he went.


	7. Chocolate Flarn Cheesecake

Susan, it seemed, had decided to make herself scarce. For the first few days after Lennier came home, Delenn put it down to simple busyness. Delenn more than anyone understood how deeply involved one could get in the work of the Rangers. Being Anla'shok Na was more than a job; it became your air and meat and drink, and Susan had thrown herself into it with the passion of someone starving for work that mattered. The Rangers had responded with quiet loyalty, and after two years were slowly beginning to be _her_ Rangers, in a way they had never quite been John's. 

It wasn't unusual for Susan and Delenn to go days without seeing much of one another, but Delenn had gotten used to greeting Susan in the mornings, or coming across her in a nook in John's den late at night, poring over flimsies and data crystals and muttering to herself. They seemed somehow to keep missing each other this week, and Delenn was beginning to feel, as John would have put it, that something was up. 

So on the evening of the fourth day when she saw Susan just ahead of her on the path towards home, Delenn quickened her steps to catch up to her. The path wound from the plaza holding the Interstellar Alliance offices, across a narrow stone bridge, and through a small but well-kept park that became Delenn's gardens. In the gathering dusk it was hard to see faces, but she would know Susan's walk and her bundled-up form anywhere. 

She caught up to Susan just as they ducked under the first rank of trees, and slipped in beside her, tucking her arm into Susan's. 

"Come to dinner," she said without preamble. 

Susan slowed to let Delenn keep pace. Her breath was white, frosting the edge of her scarf. "Are you sure you want the company?" 

Delenn was only a little short of breath from hurrying through the cool spring air. She took the opportunity to lean against Susan to steady herself. "Of course. Lennier and I cannot spend _all_ our time alone." _There are only so many times we can remove each other's clothing before getting dressed becomes pointless, and that is better done in summertime,_ she did not say. 

Her friend seemed to clear her throat. "You're sure?"

"Yes," Delenn said firmly. Susan had begged off their planned dessert night the evening Lennier came home, and had even postponed the next day's working lunch, citing meetings with her White Star captains. It was not helping Delenn's plan to broach the subject of mutual attraction before Lennier left again for his ship. "I appreciate your attempt to give us space, but I have missed you, Susan." 

It had been something of a shot in the dark to bring up Lennier, but the pause before Susan answered was fairly eloquent to ears tuned to any sign of Susan's interest. "All right," Susan said finally. She put her arm around Delenn's shoulders in a brief squeeze as they crossed the remaining bit of garden. "I've missed you too." 

Delenn leaned contentedly into the embrace. With the scratch of Susan's wool coat against her cheek, she drew Ranger One into the house with her. Just in case Susan was about to plead that she had too much work to do tonight, or was too tired to be good company, Delenn said, "There will be chocolate cheesecake." 

Susan's ears went pink, which was plausibly just from the cold. She gave Delenn a sharp look but said only, "Oh?"

"Yes." Delenn took her arm and steered her towards the kitchen, where Lennier was laying out table service in the smaller dining nook connected to the cooking area by a wide doorway. He set out a third plate when he saw Susan, as if he'd been expecting her all along. 

"Anla'shok Na," he said with a pleased smile. Susan bowed to him in return, shrugged off her coat, and shooed Delenn into a chair. Delenn's housemates moved around the small space as if they'd practiced it, handing things back and forth and never quite getting in each other's way. Susan only burnt her fingers once while lighting the candles, and Delenn saw Lennier smile at her Warrior caste oath. 

Halfway through the evening meal Lennier stopped calling Susan "Anla'shok Na." By the time they were sipping after-dinner tea, it was "Susan" instead of "Ivanova." He brushed hands with Delenn at every excuse while passing the serving dishes, though, and Delenn caught Susan watching him with a slight crease to her brow. It was not the tight look of John's from the first year Lennier had joined them, but it was unlike Susan in its uncertainty.

"Where did you even _get_ chocolate cheesecake?" Susan asked when they had eaten and Lennier had produced his box of the precious dessert. She had relaxed significantly and was leaning back in her seat. Delenn quite liked the intent look she was giving each forkful of dark, creamy chocolate. 

"That was Lennier's doing," Delenn said. She touched his hand fondly. 

"Before Shok-na Montoya retired, he discovered a way to make something resembling cheesecake from flarn," said Lennier. He curled his fingers around Delenn's. "It was terrible. I improved the recipe." 

Susan's gaze flickered away from Delenn and Lennier's joined hands. "So it's not actually cheesecake." 

"No." He was watching Susan as closely as she was watching him, but his hand on Delenn's was warm and dry, and his smile reached his eyes. 

Susan made a little considering sound. "I'm impressed. Is it really chocolate?" 

Lennier smiled. "Partly." He let go of Delenn's hand to pour everyone another cup of tea. "I could teach you, if you like," he said to Susan. 

"I didn't realize you cooked." Susan regarded him over her teacup. "I mean, everybody on Minbar cooks. I'm getting a bit of an inferiority complex here. But back when I first met you...I'm pretty sure Na'Toth didn't cook for G'Kar, and Vir and Londo probably just had stuff catered." 

"Mmm," said Lennier, probably thinking of the peculiar difficulties Vir had encountered trying to keep Londo fed and presentable--the sort of details Delenn as ambassador had never been privy to. 

"But I guess a lot of things have changed since then," Susan continued, as if testing a theory she had never quite spoken aloud. She negotiated another careful bite of soft, gooey chocolate flarn. 

"They have," said Lennier, with a slight nod of acknowledgement.

"Lennier is a very good cook," Delenn put in after a pause. She took a bite of cheesecake herself, holding Susan's gaze as she licked it from her fork and swallowed it. She was gratified to see Susan freeze with her own fork mid-air. 

After an instant Susan recovered, and deliberately cut a slightly too-large bite and brought it to her lips. It smudged a little at the corner. Delenn hid a triumphant smile. "You should let him teach you, Susan. It is not very difficult." She leaned over and gestured with her thumb an inch from Susan's lips. "You've got a bit of--" 

"Oh," Susan said, and dabbed at her own mouth. She was going a little pink again, but there was a hint of challenge in her dark blue eyes. Clear, sea-dark eyes, under arched alien brows... "Did I get all of it?"

"Yes," Delenn said, letting disappointment tinge her voice. She watched Susan's mouth until the other woman looked away and reached for her glass of water. Delenn sat back and caught Lennier's hand again. 

She wanted them both, but she wanted Susan more right now, because she hadn't just spent the whole week with Susan in various states of undress. And she had to talk to Susan, very soon. Flustering her composure was all very well, but it only piqued Delenn's desire rather than satisfying it. Susan's reactions were telling her what her answer was likely to be, but she needed her outright yes. 

Lennier was stroking circles in the palm of her hand with his thumb. " _Ah'sala_ ," he said, which Susan must know was _my wife_ , "before I go tomorrow to visit my fathers' temple, I would like to spend some hours alone in preparation. Will you walk with Susan tonight in the garden?" 

Delenn thought of how Susan shivered outdoors even in the daytime. She shook her head. "No, tonight I think I will walk indoors." With a stab of sudden yearning, she realized she could not wait any longer. "Susan, will you walk with me? I have something to show you." 

Lennier's grip tightened on her hand, but he nodded. "I will clean up here." 

She stood up, still holding his hand, and leaned down to press her forehead to his. "Thank you," she murmured to him in Adronato. 

"Go," he said in the same tongue. 

Outside the kitchen, the house was dark and quiet. Evening lamps cast stripes of light and shadow on the dark blue walls of the hallways. Lamplight flickered off Susan's _isil'zha_ jewel and made her Ranger robes into dark, warm shadows around her. 

Susan was very quiet. Delenn wanted to simply back her into a wall and kiss her, but Susan walked with a warrior's straight spine, circumspectly on the far side of the hall. With a small sigh Delenn took her arm again and moulded her small body to Susan's side. Susan put her arm around Delenn's shoulders again, and Delenn felt her heart beat faster from her nearness. 

When they turned into Delenn's wing of the house, Susan slowed. "Where are we going?"

"Come to my balcony," Delenn said. She didn't care how fast or how slow they went, now that Susan was with her. But she did have something to show her. "It is a clear night." 

Susan stopped entirely. "Isn't that kinda your private quarters?" 

"Mm-hmm." She turned to face Susan, and clasped both Susan's hands in her own. "Do you object to my quarters, Susan?" 

Susan took a long breath, like someone about to leap across a chasm. "Delenn, back there at the dinner table. I was kind of getting mixed signals from you." 

Delenn smiled. "Were you?" She let go of Susan's hand and reached out to touch her face. She stroked her fingertips down Susan's cheek and cupped her palm under her jaw. So soft. 

At the touch, Susan closed her eyes. Her lashes made dark shadows on her cheeks and Delenn could feel her breath under her hand. "You were--ever since the other night with the vids, I've felt like you were coming on to me." 

"Yes." 

Susan's eyes snapped open. "I've been going crazy all week, hoping it wasn't all in my head."

Delenn brushed her thumb over the side of Susan's lip where she had smudged the chocolate. It was still sticky. "I have been waiting for you," she said simply. 

Susan's pulse was stuttering under Delenn's fingertips. "What about Lennier?" Then, eyes widening, "Did he just send us out here to-- _Seriously?_ "

Delenn laughed, low and happy. "He did. He likes you. Come to the balcony with me, Susan." 

So Susan followed her, unresisting, through Delenn's bedroom and out onto the small flat balcony that looked out over the river. In the distance they could see Alliance headquarters, dark under the stars. It was a moonless night, and the lights of the city below them were muted. Here in the City of Sorrows, Minbari liked to be able to see the night sky.

The sky was full of stars. And in and over and behind them, waves and curtains of light flickered and danced, green and red and white and sharp blue like a lover's skin. 

"Look," Delenn said, taking Susan's hand and pointing. "The dancers." 

Susan tipped her head back and stared. "Oh, my God." A shiver ran through her, and Delenn thought it had nothing to do with the cold. 

Delenn wrapped her arms around Susan from behind and tucked her chin over her shoulder. "The sky dancers," she said. "Ever since I was a little girl, I have loved them. When I was very small my mother used to point out the figures she could see--the blue one, there, dancing; the green one, flying--" 

"My mother used to say they sang." 

"On Earth?" 

Susan nodded. " _Severnoe siyanie._ The northern lights. My father would drive us out into the country where it was dark enough to see them. My neck always hurt looking up, but I didn't care. God, it's been years." 

Delenn just held her, drinking in the sky and the warmth of the woman in her arms. 

Finally Susan crossed her arms over Delenn's. "This is the most romantic thing I've ever had a woman do, Delenn. Tell me I'm not dreaming." 

Delenn looked out over the dark, quiet city. "I have loved many people in my life, Susan, each one a gift from the universe. John and Lennier and I had many years together, the three of us and David. When John went to the sea, I did not think there would be anyone else. I did not count on you." 

Susan squeezed her hand, listening.

"John was my sun," Delenn said, "who set far too soon. Lennier is my moon--a lost part of my soul, drawn to me in every life, as sure as the tides." 

She turned Susan in her arms. The aurora was bright enough that she could see the oval of Susan's face, pale above her robes. "And you, Susan. You are like the polar lights. Unexpected, magnetic, remarkable against the cold dark." She reached up as if to brush a strand of Susan's hair behind her ear. "And very, very beautiful." 

Susan cradled Delenn's face in both hands. "I really want to kiss you right now. Would that that be a problem?" 

Delenn laughed. "Only if you plan to stop any time soon." 

The kiss was soft at first, but then Susan nipped at Delenn's lower lip and Delenn grabbed the back of her head. Delenn tasted chocolate when she ran her tongue over Susan's soft lips, and a trace of human lipstick, and Susan's own scent. Susan started to back her up against the wall of the house, and Delenn slipped her free hand under the outer layer of Susan's Ranger robes to curve over her ribs. 

She wanted to slip off those robes, to lay Susan down on them, and see what beautiful noises she might make under the dancing sky, but Susan grabbed her hands and held them away from her body. Delenn let her. "Wait," Susan said. She was panting. Delenn thought she could listen to that husky voice for hours. "Don't have a problem with you taking those off, but it's damned cold out here." 

Delenn kissed her again, short and light, and palmed open the door to her bedroom. She pulled Susan inside and spun them so Susan was against the wall. Then she reached up and slipped Susan's hair free of the tight bun at the back of her head, threaded her hands through her long dark curls, and kissed her again, quite thoroughly. "Is that better?" she said.

Susan's voice was full of laughter and promise in the dark. "Much." 

Delenn knew just how Ranger robes came unfastened, but she wanted to see Susan's face, so she passed her hand over the bedside lamp. "Good," she said as soft golden light surrounded them. "Then shut up and kiss me." 

Susan did.


	8. Teacups and Trust

Susan wandered slowly through the house towards her bedroom, unable to stop smiling. It was a large, rambling house, grand in its halls and pillars and elegant open chambers, mysterious in its small curtained alcoves and secret doors. At night, like this, she often felt that she could get lost in it. 

She tried to imagine David playing here as a child. The memories she had of this place while John was alive were mostly dinners with the adults, but in her mind she could almost hear the echoes of a small dark-haired boy running headlong through the halls. Afternoon sun streamed through the crystal windows, and Delenn called after him. John stepped out from behind a pillar to scoop David into his arms amidst a storm of giggles. Lennier took the small boy's hand and spoke calmly to him in Adronato, asking him about school. 

The layers of memories in Delenn's home were almost rich enough to taste. In the dark, every nook and recess in the walls made Susan think of backing Delenn into a corner and having her way with her, and she wondered how many of them John or Lennier had used for that purpose over the years. Or had Delenn pressed one of her lovers into that window seat in the moonlight, between her favourite abstract sculpture and the potted tree, climbed into their lap and kissed them into submission? God, Delenn's lips were soft. 

And the curve of Delenn’s waist, where her dress flared out around her hips enticingly and Susan’s hands fit so well... Susan sighed. She'd made a good start tonight on finding out exactly how much Delenn could feel through all those layers of Minbari brocade. Making her gasp and sigh and—

Lennier was in the kitchen, making tea. 

Susan froze in the doorway for a moment, jarred out of a very nice little fantasy where she was nibbling down the smooth curve of Delenn's neck and making Delenn squirm. Did he know? Was it written all over her face? 

Lennier didn't look up from pouring the tea. "Good evening." 

"Good evening, Lennier. I'm just headed to bed. Long day. Um--thank you for dinner." 

His clever hands caught a second teacup from the cupboard. "You've been with Delenn." 

He seemed as imperturbable as ever, but Susan couldn't quite meet his eyes. She suddenly remembered Delenn's double bed, and was incredibly grateful she hadn't done everything she wanted to do tonight. She frowned, choosing her words carefully. "Thank you, for that. Am I reading that right? The part where you're okay with me being...well, being with Delenn." 

He finally turned to look at her, but all he said was, "Would you like tea?" 

"Yes, thanks." She settled in at the low table and accepted the small cup of hot tisane he handed her. If Lennier wasn't going to throw her out, she wanted to talk to him. _Before you start shagging his wife, Ivanova._

Lennier sipped his tea in silence for some time, watching Susan drink hers. It was unnerving how thoroughly Lennier could watch someone. Susan made it almost all the way through her first cup of tea before she couldn't stand the silence any longer. 

"If you're just saying yes because I'm your boss," she began. 

Lennier looked faintly surprised. He was shaking his head before her sentence was half-done. "Susan," he said, "My wife or my husband has been Anla'shok Na as long as I have been with them. I know how to say no to Ranger One." 

"Why, then?"

He took his time refilling her teacup. "She is happier when you are near her. And I know that you care for her. There is no one I would rather see with Delenn." 

"Besides you." Susan turned the small cup in her hands. She knew these cups. This was one of the oldest human-style tea sets Delenn had, something she'd picked up in a shop on Babylon 5 when she'd first been appointed ambassador, meaning to use it just until her proper tea service had arrived from home. Yet here it was, a couple of decades and infinite rounds of late-night confidences later.

Lennier gave her a wry smile. “There is something that you should understand. My son is twenty years old. This is the first year I have been able to touch his mother without being sure of who else was in the room.”

Susan didn’t want to feel guilty. She thought of the way Delenn had looked at her tonight, and she didn’t want that to be wrong. Whatever John and Delenn and Lennier had done—she frowned slightly. “Because of John?”

He managed a shrug that was both yes and no at the same time. "John was the public husband. I was not. Everyone from here to the Rim knew about John and Delenn. I--at home I was always sure of Delenn, but until David was eleven years old, John's own mother called me Delenn's bodyguard." He, too, held his teacup between both hands, warming them. "My _va'helar_ , the elders of my temple, the only parents I had known, were not glad that I was joining with humans. Not John and not Delenn, though Delenn had been Grey. There are some who will not speak to me, even now, even when I visit them tomorrow." 

"I'm sorry." She thought of old arguments with her father, of the years they had spent talking past one another. What would Mama have thought of Delenn? 

"I am a Ranger, who walks in dark places. Surrounded by other Rangers, it is true, but not protected the way the President and Entil'zha are. If it had been widely known how close I truly was to them, there would have been those who tried to harm them--or David--through me. And there are more kinds of harm than physical attack. If certain human factions had heard that Delenn had taken her former aide to bed, it would not have mattered what our Minbari customs are. You can imagine, Susan, what they would have said about her morals and John's." 

"Given what they said when John and Delenn got married..." Yeah, Susan could imagine. 

A small Lennier smile. "Those we trusted most, like you and Stephen and Rathenn, have always known. John's family were very kind. And John--he tried to argue in my favour with my elders. I'm afraid it did more harm than good, except that it was the first time I saw him as more than the man Delenn inexplicably loved." 

Lennier stretched out his hand next to where hers curled around her cup, close enough that their thumbs were almost touching. "I like you, Susan. But please understand--I am tired of hiding. I cannot do it again. I will not."

So that was how you said no to Ranger One, even while you said yes. All right. That was the easy part, anyway: remembering that Delenn was still married. The hard part was not walking away because of it. With anyone else she’d have cut her losses as soon as it got anywhere near this complicated. Susan Ivanova didn't do love affairs, and she absolutely did not do drama. But here was Lennier saying _I like you_ , and she could still feel Delenn's arms around her, out under the aurora, and hear the sweet, low timbre of her voice. _I have been waiting for you._

She cleared her throat and leaned forward on her elbows. "You know, a lot of us, way back before John--we all assumed you guys were together." His brows went up. "I'm serious. What I'm saying is, as far as I'm concerned, Lennier, I'm the interloper here." She swallowed, and forced herself not to fidget with the teacup. "I want her. That's true. I love Delenn very much, and I'm starting to think it's a different kind of love than the friendship I've felt for her for years. To be honest, that scares the hell out of me. I haven't had the best luck with love." _Little understatement there, Ivanova._ "But it's Delenn. And I can't imagine Delenn without you." 

Susan looked down and saw she was still wearing her Ranger robes. Belatedly she realized he thought she'd known about the three of them all along. The same as Shalann had. _Dammit. Do I just look so informed nobody thinks to tell me things?_ Suddenly she felt very un-Minbari, and a little lost. Lennier looked very alien to her in that moment, but then he took a sip of tea and smiled. "How is she, tonight?"

"Stunning," she said, honestly. "Happy, I think. I didn't want to leave." 

"I can imagine that." He gave her a slow knowing look, and she felt her face heat up. She didn't look away, though. It was very strange, knowing that they must feel many of the same things for Delenn. Oddly companionable. 

The candles from supper had almost burned down, and soft shadows filled the corners of the quiet kitchen. "In this house," Susan said, "I miss John. Even after this long I feel like he's going to come around the corner any minute." 

He’d left notes for her when she’d first taken on the job of Ranger One. Sometimes she went back and watched them, just to hear the sound of his voice. _I know you’ll do the job your own way, Ivanova. You’re one of the best commanders I know, and neither Delenn nor I can think of anyone we’d rather trust the Rangers to. But I thought you might like a personal briefing before we throw you to the wolves._

There had been a private note near the end. _Delenn will be all right. She’s stronger and braver than I am. And David and Lennier will be in Tuzanor when they can. But if you could..._ John's voice had wavered. _Be with her sometimes, Susan. Listen to her. Argue with her. I can’t stand to think of the love of my life being lonely._

The love of John's life. "And Delenn sees him everywhere. You can see it in her eyes. I thought, if she can make room in her heart for me, I can make room for John." She searched Lennier's face. "But you're here. It's not me making room for you, it's you making room for me. If you and Delenn both want to--I'd like to try. Very much."

"There is room in this house for you," Lennier said. 

Susan slid her hand an inch across the table and touched his for just a second. "Thank you." He squeezed her fingers briefly, and she realized she'd never really touched Lennier before. Delenn was the one who was always touching people. John gave great bear hugs. But Lennier was so very self-contained, so proper and quiet. It was strange to be aware of him on a physical level at all, never mind that he wasn't the gender she'd thought he was. 

"And you and me?" she said on impulse. 

Lennier poured the last of the tea and watched her over the brim of his teacup. "Do you mean to start a sexual relationship with me as well?"

"God, no." Okay, so, not actually a conversation she was up to having right now. "It's not that I don't find you attractive or--Lennier, I like you a lot, too. Just--one thing at a time." Starting something with Delenn was plenty. Pretty damn incredible, in fact. Way more than enough for one night. 

She thought he was possibly laughing and trying not to show it. "One thing at a time will be fine." 

She scrubbed her hands briefly over her eyes. "Unless--should I be? How does this work for Minbari?" Shalann hadn't been very helpful on that score.

Neither, apparently, was Lennier. "Differently for everyone." He drained his cup and started to gather the tea service. She rose, too, meaning to continue on her aborted journey to bed. He said, "Ivanova, when I go--"

She nodded, thinking of his White Star’s next mission. "You're headed back to Drazi space." There was a whole set of training bases there. She'd talked to his captain just this morning about the complement of Ranger trainees they would be taking aboard. They were a good team, White Star 92.

"Yes." He touched her arm, and his eyes were solemn. "Please make sure she is not too much alone."

Susan made a triangle of her hands and bowed. Well, she had that from Delenn's husband and her _hela_ both now. "I always do." 

She found her room quickly this time, and slid under the covers feeling as safe, warm, and happy as she had felt in a very long time. Tomorrow it would be complicated again. It always was. Tonight she lay smiling in the dark, and dreamed of Delenn, and the northern lights.


	9. Ah'Ker'Shan

When Susan had gone, Lennier found Delenn waiting for him in his room. He must have looked as strange as he felt, for she came to him and took his hands. " _Ah'hela_ ," she said, "what is wrong?" 

"Nothing," he said, "Only that I feel too much." 

"What do you feel?"

He kissed her shoulder at the thin strap of her black silk nightgown. "I have been talking to Susan. Delenn, you know how rarely John and I were lovers. I was his _hela_ for many years in name only, not in truth."

Her thumb stroking his wrist paused. "Did you want--?"

 _What did you want?_ was always easier to answer than _What do you want?_ He dipped his forehead to hers. He had treasured the times he and John had made love, alone or with Delenn, because it closed the circuit: _sala_ , _mala_ , and _hela_ , three sides of the triangle, as it always should have been. And because John had, in the end, been a rather good lover. And he thought that for his part John had wanted to make as many memories of his little family in his last years as he could, before they were torn away from him. 

"There are many things I might have wanted," he said to Delenn. "Perhaps if John had been Minbari, had felt what our men feel for thirds as well as women, he would not have waited so long. You know he did not want me any closer than I was." 

Delenn frowned slightly. "That was not true, not always."

"No, not always." He thought of the first time, their son half-grown and he and John alone in the garden on a cool summer night, an argument transmuting itself into a physicality he had seen coming before John had. He thought of the last time, up against the wall of the steam room at the Ranger training complex, flecks of grey in John's hair and beard but his eyes still the same piercing blue and his grip still strong and sure. They had moved against each other like warriors in a dance, as if there had never been any enmity between them at all. 

"I loved him, for your sake at first and finally for his own, and he cared for me for yours and David's. What I wanted--you gave me a family, Delenn. A son, a lover, a husband. A place to stand. It was more than I ever believed I could expect." 

Her hands smoothed his shoulders. "But?" 

"Susan asked, tonight, if she ought to be sleeping with me as well." At her small intrigued smile he shook his head. "Of course she does not have to, and I have told her so. But she asked, Delenn. Not at the end. At the beginning." He caught her hand and laced her fingers with his own. "And you smell of her, Delenn, and I feel--the loss of John, and the weight of years, and gladness that you have found her, and--she is so very human, Delenn. Like John, like David, and sometimes--sometimes I am still the smallest bit afraid of losing you to them."

"No," she said, voice low. She touched his face, and held him until he could look into her eyes without fear. "You cannot lose me. I will not _let_ myself lose you. I remember you and John, what was between you and what was not. I remember too the day when we three made our son. But I remember before that, Lennier, when you first pledged yourself to me. Did you think you swore yourself to nothing? That I swore nothing in return?" 

Her infinite gentleness was as fierce as her magnificence in battle. "Never to forget what you are to me. Never to let you go alone into the night. Had I forgotten the lovers' vows we made, and I have not, I could never forget the older pledge. You cannot lose me." 

"Delenn," he said, and his voice faltered. He did not know how to say all the things he wanted to say, his foolish terror and his love and the way looking at Susan made his heart ache for the man he had once wished gone from Delenn’s life. "Delenn, show me." 

"Yes," she said. And she took his hands and moved them to the straps of her gown, and he slipped them from her shoulders. The black silk fell in waves to her feet. Naked, she fisted her hands in his coat, and kissed him as if she would devour him. 

She took him hard and fast, the way it had been when things were new between them, the way it had not been since John went to the sea. She held his hands over his head and named him in the language of her people and his, words of rituals half-forgotten, half-lost in the sounds of their pleasure. 

He did not have to be strong, he did not have to be a Ranger, for a little while. " _Ah'va'aal,_ " he said on a gasp, "My master," the old, old word she would have deserved of him when he was young and she was Satai. She did not stop him as she sometimes did, to say _I am no longer your master,_ and she let him cry his devotion as she pressed inside him, let him paint his worship on her skin with his hands until he could not remember a time or a place when she was not holding him close to her. 

" _Ah'ker'shan,_ " she said, "My beautiful one," with her nails running down his spine, with her hips against the soft skin of his belly, with her body all around him. "You are mine," Delenn said fiercely into his skin, when his lips found her breasts, when his hips rose off the bed to meet her. "Mine, mine." 

She followed his blinding release with her own, and then she began again. She touched him slowly this time, with soft strong fingers down his neck, with gentle touches at the tender places between his legs, with kisses. She laid him on his stomach and rocked her knee between his thighs, and slowly, maddeningly slowly, traced the blue _ren'helasae_ that splashed over his back. 

She made him wait for his second orgasm, dragged the pleasure out as long as he thought he could stand it and then still further, made him feel the wanting burn up from his toes to the crown of his head. "Please," he said in all the languages that he knew, and trusted that she knew he meant _More of this_ as much as he meant _Please let me come, Delenn._ She had asked him a long time ago why he liked it this way. _Because I waited for so long without hope,_ he had said. _Each time you make me wait for my pleasure now, I remember that you chose me. There will always be an end to the waiting now. So I can wait._

He begged her to let him touch her, until at last she let him slide to the foot of the angled bed, and on his knees again he used his tongue to please her until she was nearly as boneless from it as he. Then she drew him up and cupped her hand around him, and with quick sharp strokes brought him off harder than he had come in years. 

It was nearly dawn. She found a blanket somewhere among their clothing and nestled them under it. He fell asleep curled around her, her heart beating under his ear as the early stars of morning began to fade from the sky.


	10. Susenn

The sun had just crested the hills across the city when Susan went past the garden in the morning. She paused in the doorway to watch the slim, straight figure on the bench. Delenn was watching the sun again, like she had every morning for the last two years. After last night, Susan really wanted to speak to her, but Delenn's sunrises were sacrosanct. 

Delenn stirred, and got up. She seemed to have a blanket or a shawl draped over her shoulders. That was unusual: Delenn was always clean straight lines and formally-tailored dresses. She never seemed cold, or like she wanted to huddle under blankets for warmth, unlike Susan. _Some Russian you are,_ Susan chided herself. _You've gone soft after years in climate-controlled spaceships, that's what._

And then Delenn was standing right in front of her. Her hair, usually as carefully and formally done up by this time of day as her dresses, fluttered behind her in the breeze from the river. Susan itched to twine her fingers in it like she had last night. Delenn dipped her head in greeting. “Good morning, Susan.” 

“Hi, Delenn. How’s the sunrise?” Awkward, awkward. Susan kicked herself. 

Delenn smiled a small secret smile. “I was talking to John.”

“Oh.” Susan ducked her head, unsure what to say to that, and stopped short. Delenn’s feet were bare on the deck. Bare feet, bare calves, and—Susan followed the line of the blanket all the way up—either Delenn was wearing the world’s shortest nightgown, or she was naked under that blanket. 

Susan swallowed.

“How did you sleep?” Had Delenn always rounded her vowels like that?

Susan cleared her throat. She was trying to focus on Delenn’s face, but her eyes kept drifting to where Delenn held the blanket closed with one slim hand in front of her chest. “Pretty well, actually.” She had an idea, and grinned. “I sleep better when I've been worn out by a beautiful woman.”

Delenn’s grey-green eyes danced. “I wonder who that would be.” Her other hand snuck out from the blanket and rested over Susan’s heart. “I enjoyed myself.”

“So did I.” Susan glanced down: the motion had dragged the blanket perilously high on Delenn’s hip.

Delenn slid her hand to the back of Susan’s neck. “Yes, I am wearing only a blanket,” she murmured with her lips inches from Susan’s.

Susan glanced back towards the house and slipped her arms around Delenn. “What about Lennier?”

“Lennier is why I am wearing only a blanket.” Delenn's hands were surprisingly warm on Susan's skin for someone practically naked in Tuzanor in spring.

Well, that was—well. Susan raised her eyebrows as high as they would go.

“He is still sleeping. He leaves this morning to visit the temple of his fathers. But I needed to watch the sun,” Delenn said, as if it was perfectly normal to sleep with her lover, talk to the memory of her husband, and flirt with Susan all in the space of one breath. Maybe it was, for her.

“Aren't you cold?” It was warmer than yesterday, but she couldn't imagine being barefoot—among other things—out here on the garden deck.

“Why don’t you see for yourself?” Delenn took Susan’s hand and brought it down to her bare hip. And cold was not the word. Soft and warm and alive and really, really naked, those were better words.

“Not cold,” Susan murmured, and decided she had nothing to gain by resisting the urge to kiss Delenn. It was just as good as she remembered, and in the daylight Delenn looked gorgeously flushed when she was done. She kissed her some more, and finally stopped herself when she realized her hand was sliding up Delenn’s side to cup her breast. She drew a long breath. “Damn, Delenn.” She freed her other hand from Delenn's long hair and curled it around her shoulder where the blanket had slipped. Delenn purred, almost breaking Susan’s resolve. “I’m supposed to be in my office talking to the Drazi delegation. This old Green Leader's supposed to be negotiating the use of one of their asteroid belts for Ranger training." 

Delenn kissed her again, softly. “It’s all right. Go and do your work. I will see you tonight.”

Susan disengaged reluctantly. She stepped back several feet so she wouldn’t be tempted to just pull the blanket off the rest of the way. The cold air was probably doing amazing things to Delenn’s nipples…she groaned. "Dammit. Captain Martell's going to be early, he always is, or I'd..." Her voice trailed off and she tucked her hands determinedly inside the sleeves of her robe. 

“What was that?” Delenn was pulling the blanket snugly around herself again, but her eyes sparkled.

"You, me, and some quality huddling together for warmth," Susan muttered. "There's this whole human ritual to it. You'd like it." 

Delenn laughed. “Make it a short day, Susan.”

"Right." Susan took a step backward, stopped, rubbed her palms together. _Just back Delenn into the wall, tug the blanket down, lean over and lick--_

Delenn raised her brows in challenge, not making a move to go back into the house ahead of Susan. Susan tore herself away, not without several backward glances. She was pretty sure she had never seen Delenn look more smug in her life.

It was late afternoon when Susan finally managed to slip away from her duties. She delegated ruthlessly for once, to the surprise and gratification of certain members of her staff. The sun was just sinking below the mountains when she left her offices, and Susan walked home in the swiftly-falling dusk. 

She wasn't surprised that the house felt as if Lennier had gone. It was quiet and dark, and Susan slipped off her shoes and padded to her room, where she pulled on comfortable soft pants and a warm, fuzzy sweater. She felt awkward, like this was some kind of first date. Maybe wearing her own human clothes would help.

Delenn wasn't in the kitchen or the dining room or the den. The lights were on, low, in the room she kept as an office, but she wasn't there either. Feeling a little uncertain after what Lennier had said last night, Susan went down the hall to Delenn's bedroom. She paused in the half-open doorway, letting her eyes adjust to the dim light.

Delenn was asleep. 

Susan watched her for a moment. The light from the hall fell across Delenn's face and arms and the dark hair fanning out on her pillow. She had drawn a corner of the sheet to her chest, where she held it tightly against her heart. Susan felt like she was intruding on something private, and turned to leave. 

Delenn's voice, soft in the darkness, stopped her. "John?" 

Susan's heart clenched. She dropped her arm from the doorframe and, tugged by her heartstrings, went to Delenn. "No, it's Susan." 

Delenn was half-sitting up on the flat bed, and she reached out to Susan when Susan knelt beside her. "I was dreaming," Delenn said. Her voice was rough with sleep and her hand tightened on Susan's arm as if to be sure she was really there. "I--" 

"It's all right," Susan said gently. A strand of hair had stuck to Delenn's cheek and Susan brushed it aside with the pad of her thumb. They breathed together for a few moments, and then Delenn grabbed her by the front of her sweater and kissed her. 

It was sleepy and warm, with an edge of need to it. Susan kissed back, but when Delenn deepened the kiss and began to slip her hands under the hem of the sweater, Susan stopped. Her heart was beating fast, her hands smoothing the light under-dress that covered Delenn's shoulders. "I can't," she said thickly. "Not here, Delenn, not in John's bed." 

Delenn nodded, and leaned her forehead against Susan's. "All right," she said. Her breath was a little ragged, too. "Would you stay, just for a little? I do not want to be alone." 

"Okay." There was no way she was going to leave Delenn alone, even though it was tearing her heart in half to see Delenn so vulnerable. 

Delenn sat up, and the motion pulled the thin under-dress tight across her breasts. Susan gulped, but sat down on the bed in the space Delenn made for her. Delenn curled up next to her, putting her head in Susan's lap. 

"How was your day?" Delenn asked. She found a comfortable position, the back of her crest pressed flat against Susan's stomach. 

Susan stroked Delenn's hair. "Long," she said. Captain Martell hadn't brought his telepath first officer, and she'd been glad; in the privacy of her own head, she'd been picturing an awful lot of things involving herself, Delenn, and a distinct lack of clothing. But the warm weight of Delenn across her legs now seemed so much more intimate than any of her daydreams. Susan traced the edge of Delenn's crest with curious fingers until Delenn shivered and grabbed her hand and pulled it down to wrap around her shoulders. 

"I fell asleep after lunch," Delenn said apologetically. "I didn't realize how late it had become." 

Susan huffed a laugh. She laced her fingers with Delenn's. "We all used to be able to stay up all night and keep going the next day." 

Delenn kissed her fingertips, and her lips closed around just the end of Susan's little finger when she pulled away. Susan bit her lip and straightened her spine. She was _not_ going to have sex with Delenn in the bed she’d shared with her husband. No matter how much her mind was screaming that this soft, sleepy side of Delenn was the sexiest damn thing on a couple of planets. 

"I had to watch the sun," Delenn said, and that didn't help, because that brought up the image of Delenn smiling at her with the blanket almost falling off her shoulders. She realized suddenly that if she wanted to touch Delenn's skin again all she had to do was reach down about two feet and slide her hand under the hem of her shift. The very thin shift, which was clinging quite snugly to Delenn's thighs right now. 

"I should go make supper," Susan said hastily. 

Delenn lifted her head from Susan's lap. She looked surprised, but she nodded. She sat up and kissed Susan's cheek. "Thank you."

Susan slipped out of bed, and when Delenn turned on the bedside lamp she was grateful for the Minbari convention of bowing silently in response, because she didn't trust her voice. Delenn's hair was tousled and her cheeks were flushed with sleep. In the light, the under-dress was even more revealing than Susan had imagined. It peaked over the buds of her nipples and fell in soft folds over her stomach. The fabric had twisted between Delenn's legs in her sleep, and the lamp cast lovely dark shadows there as Delenn sat back against the headboard. 

Susan put what she felt was a very valiant effort into not throwing herself at her friend, and bowed out of the room. Her breathing didn't slow down until she was in the kitchen and digging through the cold storage for something to eat. She was in no state to cook, but maybe some toast, some cheese and fruit, maybe some winter vegetables. Did they have any of that chocolate-flarn cheesecake from last night? Fuck, better not think about the cheesecake and the way Delenn had licked it off her fork. 

She had found the bread and was slicing something purple and Minbari (she couldn't remember the name, but it tasted a bit like carrots) when she felt Delenn's arms wrap around her waist. She hadn't heard her come up behind her. She tried to turn to face Delenn, but Delenn held her against the counter with the same effortless strength she had used to pin Susan to the practice mat last week. Even half-human and half-dressed she was stronger than Susan. 

Delenn closed her hand over Susan's. She took the knife away and set it down on the counter. She tucked her chin over Susan's shoulder like she had last night, and murmured into her ear. She smelled so good. "How was your day, Susan? Did you think of me?" 

Susan nodded. With Delenn pressed flush along her back it took a moment to form words. "Yeah. All damn day." In glorious technicolour. 

Delenn smiled against her neck. Then she slipped her hands under the sweater and flattened her palms on Susan's bare stomach. Her small, strong hands were incredibly warm. Susan purred before she could stop herself. Delenn had touched her this much last night and it had been amazing and frustrating. This time Delenn's left hand crept higher under the sweater. Her other hand dipped below the waistband of Susan's trousers, teasing over the edge of her panties. Susan tried again to push away from the counter. It wasn't fair that she couldn't touch Delenn, too. Not after imagining it for so long. 

"Stay still, Susan." That was Delenn's command voice. It curled right down Susan's spine and made her want to obey, the way the best of her Earthforce commanding officers' voices had done. But none of them, not even Jeff, had ever made her feel like this. 

"Fuck," she said, coherently. 

"You wanted to touch me this morning. Like this?" Delenn slid her hand further up and cupped Susan's breast under the sweater. She ran her thumb over Susan's nipple through her bra and Susan swore. Delenn laughed, and repeated the motion over and over until Susan rolled her head back on her shoulder, panting. Delenn ran her fingers under the edge of the bra, looking for the catch. 

"Front closure," Susan managed. She'd used to be able to form full sentences. Recently. It had been a whole thing, sentences.

"You came prepared, I see," Delenn said. She cupped Susan's bare breasts in both hands now, filling her palms with the weight of them. Susan could feel Delenn's soft sleeves against her ribs, which meant Delenn was still in that nearly-transparent under-dress. It really was not _fair_ , and the sweater was too damn hot, but the way Delenn was touching her Susan didn't want her to stop, not even for an instant. 

Delenn's hands ghosted lightly over her breasts and then pinched her nipples hard enough to make her groan, played over her stomach and paid attention to her breasts together and then one at a time until Susan was squirming and pressing her hips against the counter. She swallowed a moan and bit back several highly expressive Russian swearwords.

And then Delenn moved her right hand and shoved it down the front of Susan's pants, and Susan's thoughts stuttered to a halt. Delenn's fingers slicked Susan's wetness over her clit and then pushed up inside her, hard and full where she was soft and aching, and Susan grabbed the counter and held on. As many times as she'd imagined this, Susan had never thought of serene Delenn _fucking_ anyone before, and she was never ever going to look at those strong clever fingers the same way again--

Everything was warmth and arousal, tightness and wet heat, Delenn's fingers sliding slick and hard against her and Delenn's voice in her ear, murmuring what Susan was absolutely sure were gorgeous dirty things, if only she could understand them. Delenn made a little possessive growl when Susan drove her hips down to meet her hand, and when the pleasure was too much and Susan bit her lip and came with a soft cry, Delenn's free arm held her up, snug around her waist.

"Susan, beautiful Susenn," Delenn was saying when Susan could parse words again, and Susan turned in her arms and kissed her hard. 

She pulled her own sweater off over her head in one quick motion, and backed Delenn up until her calves hit the low Minbari table. She stopped kissing only long enough to find the fastenings on Delenn's shift (it opened down the front, and distantly Susan wondered if that meant her dresses did too), and then she had Delenn flat on her back on the table and finally, finally got to touch her. 

Delenn was warm and lithe and incredibly sexy. Susan dipped her head and closed her mouth around one of Delenn's pale blue nipples. The thin fabric of the half-open shift did absolutely nothing to make them any less tantalizing, and she sucked until Delenn was moaning. Delenn made the most gorgeous little sounds, and her chest rose and fell with her quick breaths. Susan straddled one leg and let Delenn rock against her thigh until she felt Delenn flex beneath her as if to sit up and take charge again. 

"No," Susan said. She leaned down and kissed her. "Let me touch you." 

Delenn lifted her chin and looked at her with far more focus than Susan could have managed in her position. It was amazing how she could be panting with arousal and still look like a commander who knew where all her pieces were on the battlefield. 

"I've wanted to do this ever since you beat me at _denn-bok_ practice last week," Susan murmured. “Longer.” She ran her hand up under the edge of the white shift where it had rucked up over Delenn's hips. Delenn wasn't wearing panties. "Let me?"

Delenn let out a small breath and nodded. Susan caught her lips in a fierce kiss. Then she went back to Delenn's breasts. She nibbled and nipped and kissed at them until Delenn was clawing at her back and making those delicious noises again. Susan felt her own heart hammering in her throat, felt really and truly warm all the way through for the first time since she'd come to Minbar. 

"Have I mentioned," she said, "that I love this dress?" 

The woman below her was perhaps a little less focused now. "No," Delenn said. "Not in--so many words." 

"Love this thing. Do you know how you look in it?" She rocked her leg up between Delenn's and felt Delenn wet and hot through the fabric of her trousers. "You look just about naked, but it's almost better than naked, because it's such a goddamn tease." 

"Speaking of teasing," said Delenn. Her grey-green eyes had gone quite dark and her nails dug into Susan's hips. 

Susan traced her fingers over Delenn's knee and ran them slowly up the inside of her thigh. Delenn spread her legs and _mewled_. It was the hottest thing Susan had ever seen. "Did you want something?" she asked. 

"You were going to touch me." 

Susan had the shift open all the way now, and she pushed it aside and started to kiss Delenn's skin. She licked wide circles around her breasts, and when she closed her lips around Delenn's bare nipple, Delenn's hips jerked off the table. Susan lifted her head. "I was," she said. She bent her head to Delenn's other breast, and stroked her other hand low over her soft stomach. 

Delenn said something very intense in Adronato that Susan could only guess at.

"Wow," she said. She leaned up and kissed her on the lips. "I don't think that's in the dictionary." 

Delenn grabbed the sides of her head. "It means," she said between kisses, " _touch me, I am going out of my mind._ " 

"Think it means more than that," Susan said. She flicked the flat of her thumb over Delenn's clit. Delenn's whole body spasmed. Her hands were still in Susan's hair and she pulled her face close to her mouth.

Into Susan's ear she said the Adronato words again. " _Fuck me_." 

The flush of heat went through Susan like an echo of her own orgasm. "God, Delenn. Yes." She moved her hand again, and the way Delenn keened told her to _keep doing that_ as clearly as any words. Delenn was so wet that Susan had most of her hand inside her within a few strokes, and Delenn threw her head back and arched up to meet her, strong and bright and beautiful. 

Susan had always been quiet when she made love, years of thin walls and close military quarters taking their toll. But Delenn, Delenn was open and free and glorious, in the sounds she made and the way she moved. Watching Delenn lose herself in pleasure was a sensual experience almost as good as being touched herself. 

She wanted to slow everything down, so she could remember it all--the way Delenn's skin glowed and the smell of her, the way she dug her fingers into Susan's shoulder and the sound of her voice, still speaking Susan's language until her body tensed hard and she came in Susan's arms in a sudden rush of Adronato and heat. 

Delenn sank back against the table, and then reached up and kissed Susan so deeply she could feel it down to her toes. She pulled Susan down against her chest and held her until they both stopped shaking. 

"On the table in the kitchen," Delenn murmured, sounding amused. "One would think we had no beds." 

Susan found herself laughing from pure joy. "Well then, by all means." She pushed herself up with an effort and grinned down at the regal, half-naked woman below her. "Come on. The night is young, and I've got a pillow with your name on it."


	11. Echoes

Delenn woke slowly just before dawn, consciousness stealing over her gently. She found Susan's shoulder warm under her cheek, their legs tangled together under the blue and yellow quilt Liz Sheridan had given Delenn, the one that did not go with anything else in the house. It was warm, Susan had said, when Delenn offered it during her first winter in Tuzanor. Delenn spread her hand flat on Susan's stomach and let her heart and mind enjoy the quiet moment. 

It had been a very long time since she had been with a woman in this way. Before her marriage, before John, before she had even been human at all. Not before Lennier, but before Lennier had been anything like a lover. Mayan, dear, artistic, temperamental Mayan, had been the last. They had made love in her ambassadorial quarters on Babylon 5, renewing an old sexual friendship that had survived their school days and divergent careers and the dark days of the war. Mayan had been curious about the aliens around them, and not so ready to give them the benefit of the doubt as Delenn, but when Delenn had leaned over the couch and kissed her she had left off any questions about Delenn's true mission without any real protest. They had been so young. 

It seemed that Susan did indeed sleep more deeply after a romantic night. The arm not trapped under Delenn was flung out across the bed, and Delenn suspected that when she slept alone Susan took up nearly all the available space. Larger than life, that was her Susan. 

Delenn smiled fondly to herself and slipped from under the covers as silently as possible. No need to wake her friend. It was a rest day, though Susan often had trouble taking rest days. Delenn had complained of it to Lennier, and gotten an accusation of sheerest hypocrisy in response. Still, she shut off the alarm clock on the bedside table. Susan could do with a little more sleep. 

She stood looking down at Susan for a long moment. This woman had no crest, no flare of blue at the crown of her head, no elegant strong Minbari brows. She had not had a Minbari woman's responses when Delenn had traced patterns down her spine during sex, but she had moved with that same indefinable feminine grace Delenn had missed without realizing it. Delenn touched a lock of Susan's hair; she had never slept with anyone with hair as long as her own before. 

Someday, if Susan was willing, Delenn would do the sleep-watching ritual, letting Susan see her face while she slept and watching Susan's in return. But that would be a long time in the future. She was not afraid of what Susan might see, but she did not know how Susan would desire to think of their relationship. For now, Delenn simply tugged the quilt up over Susan's bare shoulder, and passed her hand close to Susan's cheek without touching her skin. 

She could not find her clothing, but draped over the back of a chair was a long-sleeved white shirt. Delenn recognized the cut of an Earthforce uniform. It seemed right to slip it on and do up the buttons. Smaller than John's shirts of the same make, it was still big enough on her slimmer frame that it would do as a dress for the moment. She padded quietly out to the garden deck just as the first rays of the sun were starting to peek over the horizon.

* * *

Susan nuzzled into the pillow and murmured sleepily. She felt heavy and warm and her body ached pleasantly in ways it had not done for a long time. The sheets slid deliciously over her naked skin and she stretched, feeling vaguely that someone should be next to her. _Talia, golden hair fanning out on the pillow, soft creamy skin and a bright smile on lips kissed free of her red lipstick..._

No, that wasn't right. That was a dream. Susan hunched her shoulders, pressing her face against the cool pillow. Talia had only ever been a dream, for years upon years now, a dream that twisted into a nightmare more often than not. It had been twenty-five years and she could still see the sneer on Talia's lovely face. _You believed everything she said to you. All the things you wanted to hear. To get her closer to you...to what you knew._

It had all felt so real just now. Delenn's hands on Susan against the kitchen counter, her transparent nightgown the embodiment of every fantasy Susan had ever had, body warm and pliant on the tea table under Susan's touch, her legs wrapped around Susan's waist as they moved against each other in Susan's bed late into the night. 

All the things she wanted to hear...

That she had a place here on Minbar. That she could have the steady, easy love John had always had, that she'd envied from a distance. That incredible, gorgeous, brilliant Delenn might want her. That someone like Lennier, Minbari to the core, might respect her as a Ranger. 

Susan yawned and opened her eyes. 

The bed was empty. 

She put out her hand to the sheets beside her. They were warm, and the other pillow was lying at the top of the bed as if someone had been sleeping on it, instead of being tossed into some odd corner of the floor the way it usually ended up when Susan was sleeping alone. Thin sunlight streamed through the window and Susan blinked. 

Of course. Delenn was always up before the sun. 

Susan fell back onto her pillow with a sigh. She rubbed at her eyes. Of course. Delenn wasn't some girl she'd picked up on a whim on shore leave, impressed by her captain's rank or her general's bars, who would disappear again before breakfast, leaving Susan to get on with her life. She wasn't even the on-again, off-again fling with the senator's aide in Geneva, with her cute little mouth and the sense to never ask questions when Susan got quiet.

No, Delenn was real. Delenn was respectable, married, and slowly drawing Susan into her family. Delenn was her friend. Delenn, if anything, knew her too well: knew things about her that she hadn't told anyone she'd served with since Babylon 5. About who Jeff really was. About who Marcus had been and how he had died. About Talia. 

Susan rolled over, twisting her legs in the sheets, and came up short at the sight before her. Delenn was sitting cross-legged on the floor, hands on her knees and eyes closed. She was dressed in nothing but Susan's old white Earthforce uniform shirt, and she only had two buttons done up. She had tilted her head back, exposing her neck, and her lips moved silently in prayer. 

As Susan watched, transfixed, Delenn opened her eyes. "Good morning, Susan." 

That warm, rich voice made Susan want to squirm against the mattress. Delenn was shockingly lush and sensual like this. The white shirt moulded to the curves of her breasts and barely covered the tops of her thighs. Susan pushed herself up on her elbows to take in the view, letting the sheet slip from her shoulders. Delenn's clear grey eyes flickered down to Susan's bare breasts and then back to Susan's face, and creased in an appreciative smile. 

"Hey," Susan said, finding herself oddly tongue-tied despite how intimate they had been just a few hours ago. "So how many rituals have I just triggered by sleeping with you?"

Delenn chuckled, low and lovely. "It depends." 

"On what?" Susan rolled her shoulders languidly and ignored a tiny flutter of anxiety. By all accounts, Minbari sex rituals were as arcane as their procedures for anything else. But with Delenn looking so beautiful and so sure of herself, she felt more curious than worried. 

"On whether you'd like to do it again." 

It startled a laugh from Susan's chest. Delenn got to her feet and came towards her; the sway of her hips made Susan's mouth go dry. It was one thing to have a carefully-hidden decades-long crush on Delenn, but something entirely different to have all of Delenn's attention focused on her. That little smile was all for Susan. The woman who had stared down First Ones was sauntering towards her bed and daring her to do something about it. 

Susan tilted up her chin, grinned. "Any chance to see you in that shirt." 

Delenn leaned over the bed and kissed her. Susan melted under the touch, and when she came up for air the urge to be flippant had dissolved. 

"Yeah. I want to do this a lot more." 

"Good." The white cuffs of Susan’s shirt were folded back crisply at Delenn's wrists, and Susan wanted to dip her head and lick just where her pulse ran under the pale skin. "As do I."

"It’s just--" Susan ran her hands down Delenn's biceps. "It's been a while. I don't mean the sex, I mean...someone I've really cared about."

Delenn dropped down onto the bed and settled astride Susan's outstretched legs. Susan had to blink for a moment, because _Delenn sitting in my lap_ was not something she was used to yet. Not that she minded. At all. 

"Sex is many things to Minbari," Delenn said. "Whether it is friendship or love or companionship, and whether it is for a short time or much longer, we do it thoughtfully. But not without passion."

Susan settled her hands on Delenn's hips and rubbed her thumbs over the soft skin. "You have it all worked out. The rest of us get so confused. Love too hard and lose it all, or miss taking a chance and wake up nights wondering if you should have tried just a little harder. Even if you know it wouldn't have made a difference, in the end." She shook her head and made a frustrated gesture. "Maybe you have the right idea with all those rituals."

"I have found that rituals do not stop heartbreak. They only give it form and let us understand ourselves better. And perhaps feel less alone in the universe. But that is no small thing." 

Susan frowned. "Like you and the sunrise." 

"Yes. With John I knew what was coming. Other times…" Delenn flattened her palms on her bare thighs. "I lost someone else, a very long time ago. A good man, the best of all of us. I had wanted him for many months, but had done nothing. When at last we came together, there was one night of great passion, and then he was taken from me by a…a terrible accident." Some well of deep regret echoed in Delenn's voice. "Had it been wrong to love him? I could not believe that. But I was still afraid. I was still afraid when John and Lennier came into my life. Still cautious. The loss of a past hope might make some people immediately grab hold of any new love that presents itself, but you and I are not such people, Susan."

"No, we're not." There was too much gentleness in those grey-green eyes for Susan to look at them for long. She stared down into her lap instead and covered Delenn's hands with her own. It was strangely comforting to be reminded that she wasn't the only one with ghosts in the back of her mind. "Are we--I do want you. But if you want to wait--"

Delenn caught Susan's chin and tipped it up to look at her. "I think that _we_ have waited long enough," she said, and kissed her. 

_I'm never going to get tired of this,_ Susan thought. The kiss grew longer, neither of them willing to let go of the other. Susan ran her hands up Delenn's sides under the white shirt and brushed her palms over her nipples; it earned her a small gasp, and Delenn's hands tightened on the back of her head. 

By the time Delenn pulled back, one of the two remaining buttons on her shirt had come undone, and Susan's hands had found their way down to cup her ass. Delenn bent her head to kiss her jaw, and murmured, "Do you remember when you taught me how to shower?" 

Susan felt a blush stain her cheeks and heat pool in her belly, not from Delenn half-naked above her now, but from that decades-old forbidden memory. "Oh, yeah. You were hard to forget."

Delenn pulled back to look at her, seeming extraordinarily pleased. "I was?" 

"You were fucking gorgeous, and covered in soap bubbles, and you needed help with the shower head. And I hadn't gotten laid in months, and there you were all wet and naked. And you were the damn _Minbari ambassador_ , Delenn. Who wanted me to play with her _hair_."

"You saved me from great frustration, Susan. If Commander Ivanova cannot help me, I thought, I will shave it all off and go about like a Centauri woman. That at least had precedent." She carded her fingers through the hair at Susan's temple, and the soft edges of her smile made Susan wonder if she'd ever been unsure that she was beautiful, back then. Susan had never seen it, if she had. 

"You want to talk frustration…" Susan muttered. 

Delenn's eyes lit. She trailed her fingertips down Susan's neck and smiled wickedly. "Did I affect you, then? What did you do when you were alone?" 

Susan had never told a soul about that. 

Delenn's voice was pure sex. "Did you touch yourself, Susan?" 

Fuck. 

"Because I did. It was the first time I explored my new body in that way."

She wasn't sure which was more intimate, Delenn talking about masturbation or Delenn telling her about the change. Somehow she thought this detail was something maybe even John hadn't known--Delenn's first sexual experience in a human body.

"I never knew." It was hard to speak. "You were so--the last person on the station I was supposed to think of like that. Second-last, maybe. Tied with Talia." 

The warm caresses on her neck didn't stop at Talia's name, and something small and tight started to unwind in Susan's chest. She reached up and pulled Delenn down again and hoped her kisses might say what she couldn't put into words. 

"You really wanted me?" she said against Delenn's lips. "That long ago?"

Delenn nodded. "There were many things I wanted, paths we might have taken. I thought this one had ended then. I'm glad it did not." 

"Me, too."

"There is a ritual for lovers," Delenn said, "who wish to set aside the past and build something new. Once they have meditated on what has brought them to this place, and declare their wish to move forward together, they cleanse one another ritually to show that they wish to care for one another in the future. "

It took a moment for this to register, and then Susan grinned. "You mean shower sex?" 

Delenn popped open the last button on Susan's Earthforce shirt. She sat back without an ounce of shyness in her posture. "In this case, " she said--Susan was entirely unclear how the bed did not spontaneously combust--"yes."


	12. Spring Rain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy belated birthday to [openended](http://archiveofourown.org/users/openended), whose love for Susan Ivanova is an inspiration. <3
> 
> Adronato from [rivendellrose](http://archiveofourown.org/works/370975):  
>  _ah'melierla_ \-- my very dear friend

Delenn's shower was huge. Less a fixture than a room of its own, its tiled floor and walls seemed carved from the blue-green crystal of the mountains. There was a skylight overhead, and small lights built into the wall at ankle-height, glowing softly. A small running fountain near one end of the room served as a sink, and low marble benches were set all around the walls. 

Susan stared, frozen in the act of slipping off her robe. All those times she'd imagined Delenn in the shower, it had always been the cramped station facilities in Green Sector, metal and plastic and square. If she'd dared to strip down and join Delenn in the shower stall back then, she would have fit--just--but instead she'd propped open the door and tried to aim the shower head so it didn't completely soak the floor. 

But this...this was something entirely different. Graceful, expansive, Minbari, huge--unselfconsciously spacious, the way rooms could afford to be in planetside dwellings. It was beautiful, like the rest of Delenn's house, and Susan felt a twinge of regret. The fantasy of backing Delenn into her own shower on B5 was going to stay a fantasy, then; she couldn't go back and change things so she did reach out, after all, and touch Delenn's soap-slick back, her slim squared shoulders or her gorgeous ass. 

Susan shook herself. _Don't be an idiot._ Of course she couldn't go back, but there was no way in hell she was trading today for any fantasy of what might have been. She was just going to have to put up with luxury.

The soft rustle of cloth hit the floor behind her and she turned. Delenn leaned in the doorway, wearing nothing but a smile.

Making out with Delenn in low light and having passionate half-clothed sex had given Susan a wonderful sense of how Delenn felt in her arms, but she hadn't had a chance to just _look_ at her yet, and the years since that first shower had dimmed her memories of a naked Delenn more than she'd thought. _Or you were just trying real hard not to look._

Delenn was human, and not; the delightful discovery last night that her nipples were pale blue rather than pink was complemented by a very faint splash of blue between her legs where Susan had pubic hair. Sometimes it had been easy to think of Delenn as human except for her crest, or Minbari except for her hair, and forget that her own peculiar beauty was unique among everyone who had ever existed. She wore it with such ease now that it was also easy to think Susan had imagined the slight hesitation when Delenn had stripped out of her pajamas for that sanity-saving shower long ago. 

"I do not think you will need this," Delenn said, holding out her hand for Susan's robe. As she bent to tuck the robe into a dry-niche in the wall, her hair fell forward and Susan could see that the muted blue pattern continued up her back, an echo of the markings at the crown of her head in the old days, tattered lace against the arch of her spine.

And then the ceiling opened up, and it began to rain.

The first light drops, hardly more than a morning's mist, turned into a torrent. Susan spit water out of her face, grabbed Delenn's hand, and pulled her under the water and into a kiss. Her hands tangled in Delenn's half-dry hair, and Delenn laughed against her mouth. 

They were drenched in a matter of moments. Delenn's breasts slid against her own, slippery with warm water. The floor, like firm sand under her feet, was gritty enough that she didn't slip when she hooked her ankle around Delenn's leg and ran it up and down her calf. Susan came up between kisses to breathe air and raindrops, and when Delenn finally let go of her she found herself smiling into the crook of Delenn's neck. "I can't believe you thought about this as much as I did."

Delenn bent her head and licked at the water rolling down Susan's shoulder, her tongue a small firm line on slick soft skin. "I often thought I should have asked you to stay," she said. "Perhaps you would have joined me in nakedness, and helped me to explore by example. But then you would have realized you needed to inform your team of your continued unavailability." She skimmed her hands down Susan's sides and tugged her closer by the hips. 

"While you were touching me?" With Corwin or Michael on the other end, God. 

Delenn's lips, trailing across Susan's chest, found Susan's nipple. She bit down gently. Susan let out an involuntary squeak. "Yes," Delenn said. "Quite like that."

The hands on her hips slipped around behind her and moved to her ass, holding her in place so Delenn could attend to Susan's breasts to her heart's content. Inexorable and infinite in patience, Delenn teased and sucked and bit with unwavering concentration. Susan held on with all her strength, afraid that if she let go to tend to the growing hot ache between her thighs she would simply melt into the floor. She pressed up against Delenn, so close to having something to grind against but not nearly close enough. 

"You had an unending stream of duties," Delenn said, soothing a bite with her tongue. Her voice fell until it was almost lost under the sound of the water. "But I hoped that you might choose to spend the time with me, if I had asked."

_Oh God, don't stop,_ Susan thought, and swallowed a whimper when Delenn finally took pity on her and pushed rain-slick fingers right where she needed them. "Why--oh God--" 

Sunlight slanting down through the skylight caught the curve of Delenn's crest and turned her loose wet hair to shining black. It glittered off the shower tiles in small sharp rainbows, so bright that Susan had to close her eyes. She was so caught up in images from long ago that her orgasm surprised her. 

"Why didn't you?" 

Delenn looked up, water dripping into her warm grey eyes. "At the time it was enough," she said. She set both hands on Susan's shoulders and pushed gently until Susan's back hit the tile wall and she slid slowly down to the blue and white bench. "At the time." 

"I would have stayed," Susan murmured, tugging Delenn between her legs. She rested her cheek on her warm, wet stomach. _I would have stayed, but it wouldn't have been like this. Just lust. Not…this._ She pressed a languid kiss to just below Delenn's breasts, and kissed gently down her stomach towards the pale blue below. It was impossible to separate human from Minbari where they met here in the same woman, and impossible not to be curious about how Delenn was different from herself. When Susan swiped her tongue over the very edge of the blue, Delenn took an involuntary half-step forward and clutched at her shoulders. Susan hid a smile and sucked a little harder, and Delenn made a low growl in the back of her throat.

"Susan--" Her hand came up and she grabbed Susan's head so tightly it almost hurt. 

Susan nuzzled at her stomach again, softer with the years the way they both were, ivory-pink and tasting of mountain springs. She slid her hands around to Delenn's back to rub soothingly at the base of her spine, and got a sharp intake of breath in response. Dipping her head again--was she imagining that the blue places were hotter than the rest?--she gave the tiniest little nip. Delenn's hand twisted in her hair. 

" _Susan_." Delenn pulled her away and cupped her face. Her hands were trembling. 

Susan tipped her head back to watch her. "You all right?"

Delenn stroked the sides of her face. Her eyes had gone very soft. "You're touching me as if I were completely Minbari." 

"Oh." She wasn’t sure what she'd done, exactly. Nothing different from last night, she thought. She pressed her hand flat against Delenn's lower stomach again. Delenn bit her lip. "I am?" 

"When I was young," Delenn said, "when my body was different, I could sometimes reach completion just from what you are doing now. Even now, without the _ren'helasae_ , it is extremely erotic."

Susan took Delenn's hand. "Show me." 

So Delenn did--painted an invisible tree of blue across her body, showed Susan what had been and what was now. Susan forgot that she'd ever been asked to show this woman anything, just followed her voice and her breath and the way Delenn's hands moved--gently and patiently and then more desperately, laughing while the rain fell in shining iridescent drops about them.

* * *

It was a rest day, so they made it to early afternoon before an urgent call came for the President of the Alliance. Delenn stood outside the house, adjusting the clasp of Susan's Ranger cloak. "I may be late, _ah'melierla_."

"No later than me. I'll be up." Susan dropped a soft kiss below Delenn's ear. "I want to have those commendations ready for this year's Ranger class before tomorrow."

"Good." Delenn kissed her properly again, and turned to stride away across the garden towards her afternoon's duties. Susan watched her go. Delenn's purple and grey skirts swished around her calves in time with her short decisive steps. There was no wind and her hair was caught up in its work-day twist again; with her stately high collar and the dignified set of her slim strong shoulders, Delenn looked every inch the respectable presidential matron. Susan thought of a half-buttoned white shirt and hid a smile. 

At the foot of the bridge over the small river, Delenn paused. Lennier was leaning there, watching the water go by at the bottom of the shallow chasm, but he looked up instantly at her approach. Delenn bent her forehead to his, and they murmured together for a moment, too quiet for Susan to hear. She felt a momentary stab of jealousy--Delenn should be with _her_ \--but there was something in the way Lennier touched Delenn that made her pause. He brushed her cheek gently, rested his hand on the small of her back, and Delenn leaned into his embrace just like she had Susan's.

_Do I get to have that?_ Susan found herself thinking. _So many years of devotion that we'd hardly need words?_ She thought about Delenn clinging to her when she woke from dreaming about John, and about how Lennier's hand curled around his teacup, unnervingly warm against Susan's own fingers. Delenn was just as beautiful now as she had been when Susan kissed her. What if Susan got to watch this love while she learned how to love Delenn?

And then Delenn turned away again, crossing the bridge quickly without looking back. Susan tore her eyes away from the graceful figure to find that Lennier was watching her. He dipped his head in her direction, a half-bow, and smiled his old small Lennier smile as if to say, _It's Delenn. What can we do?_

Susan smiled back, and turned her face to the pale Minbari sun. It seemed bright, this morning, and warm at last. Spring was coming to Tuzanor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Acknowledgements:
> 
> Profound and effervescent thanks to [hearts_blood](http://archiveofourown.org/users/hearts_blood), who brainstormed and beta-read. Without her, this would just be three disjointed scenes and a vague sense of failure. Thank you as well to everyone who left encouraging comments and kudos while this was in progress. Fic-enablers ftw! 
> 
> Thanks also to [muccamukk](http://archiveofourown.org/users/muccamukk), who put up with a year and a half of chatter about Lennier.


End file.
